[1][2] Born into a vicarage family at Four Elms in Kent, England, Handford began work in 1936 with London Films at Denham as a trainee sound recordist.

[3] He honed his sound recording skills during the D-Day landings, where he served with the Army Film Unit of the British Expeditionary Force,[4] for which he was mentioned in despatched and awarded the MBE.

Handford pioneered the use of original synchronous sound recording for film director David Lean on Summertime (also known as Summer Madness, 1955) which was shot on location in Venice, and developed the technique during the British New Wave cinema movement, working on films such as Room at the Top (1959), The Entertainer, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Sons and Lovers (all 1960), Billy Liar, Tom Jones (both 1963), Oh!

ASV is now part of the Sanctuary Group (itself now owned by Universal) and Transacord recordings remained on catalogue on CD into the late 1990s, with some still readily available until comparatively recently (as at 2011).

The book was written with major input from both Transacord and the National Railway Museum and includes a history of the label plus the most comprehensive discography of UK releases ever made available.