Other works

This book, published privately for family and friends by Philip Wood in 2022, is probably one of the most original, audacious and extraordinary books you could ever read, ingenious and unexpected. It contains a beautiful and enchanting course for adults for playing piano songs by colours, a delightful read even if you do not intend to play. However, the music is only an allegory, a symbol for something much, much bigger going on. The music is an allegory for the effort, the order, the harmony and the emotion, which are treated as the values needed to ward off the apocalypse. Along the way you will encounter demography, economics, science, love, law, philosophy, morality, how to understand time and the future, and whether we are miracles or beasts. There is a fascinating discussion of why the keyboard is the complicated structure that it is and why it took more than 1000 years to develop its shape and eccentricities, a discussion of the waves of sound and light, a discussion of the psychology of why we value music and the evolutionary background, some tips on composing songs, and a selection out of more than 1000 years of songs to play, beginning with the “Hurrian Hymn to Nikkal” of about 1400 BC. The book has a dramatic ending, the final twist in the plot.

This multi-stranded book, which crosses all the normal genres, is for those who want to expand their talents and widen their minds. It is for those who want to do and to think.

The book is not yet available to the public.

This book was written by Philip Wood and was published in 2023 as a private limited edition primarily for the successors of the members of the author’s family, that is, their grandchildren and the children of their grandchildren and so on throughout future generations. It was intended as a direct link to their past family. The book was deposited in a time capsule deep down on the author's land in December 2023, just before Christmas, followed by a celebratory champagne during a ceremony on the hill. The capsule contained a message signed by all 15 members of the author’s inner family with greetings to future generations. It also contained various objects of no intrinsic value but which they valued as a source of memories. The capsule was filled with argon.

The author’s preface stated: “My view is that everybody has a duty to record some part of their history, however short or plain, for the benefit of their successors. The remembered family links from past generations to future generations is a source of reassurance that we all went through common experiences. The result is that the past is a fount of something good, not just a void, a waste of blankness and silence. I write this to rescue the past from oblivion as best I can”.

The book contains nearly 400 pages of text, plus around 150 pages of photographs stretching as far back as possible with photos from the 19th century history of the family to the present.

There were contributions from my brother and sister, and also from our children and their spouses.

The book, or an edited version of the book, is not yet available to the public.

This book is currently work in progress. It is an autobiography of Philip Wood’s wife Marie-Elisabeth whose family were refugees from Poland to France. She emigrated to England in 1967 and subsequently, after marrying Philip, created a very large garden covering many acres at their home Knowle Grange in Surrey, a garden which was filmed twice for television. One of the broadcasts was called “England’s 20 most beautiful gardens.” The book will describe how this inspiring and original garden was designed and built over more than 25 years, a story of hope and optimism for all creators of gardens everywhere. She began the garden after the disaster of the 1987 hurricane which devastated the land.