cartographer

When the cartographer James Cheshire stumbled into the room in University College London several years ago, he encountered less a resource for mapping the modern globe than “an epitaph of a world we once knew.”

The Thais argued that the French cartographers had erred in moving the border away from the watershed, the agreed dividing line, putting the temple in Cambodia.

In 2002, the two men returned to the bank in three sailboats with a team of architects, cartographers and marine biologists from several countries to continue building.

The old maps of the body had the equivalent of major roads and significant geography but also areas cartographers labelled unknown or “terra incognita”.

But behind the scenes were hundreds of thousands of military women who worked in crucial non-combat roles such as codebreakers, ship plotters, radar operators and cartographers.