Join acclaimed author at Darwin lecture
An acclaimed British author will visit Charles Darwin University to deliver a public lecture next week, providing a peek into a fascinating life of exploration captured in best-selling books.
Simon Winchester OBE will deliver a lecture entitled: “The Pleasures of a Tangled Life” on Wednesday November 26 as part of his Australian tour as a guest of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
The globetrotting author has covered subjects as diverse as volcanography and earthquakes, to dictionary-making and will reveal how his career was shaped and how his adventures inspired his writing.
“I had always wanted to travel and actually wanted to become a sailor with the Royal British Navy until I discovered I was red-green colour blind,” Mr Winchester said.
“My geography teacher at the time encouraged me and I instead completed a degree in geography at Oxford University.”
Mr Winchester established his writing career as a foreign correspondent for the Guardian newspaper and the BBC, before becoming an independent writer/researcher of best-selling books in multiple fields of academic and international interest.
He said he hoped that during his visit to Darwin he would conduct research for his next book about the Pacific Ocean.
“I have always been interested in the notion that the Pacific Ocean has a major influence on the world’s weather patterns,” he said.
“Climatologists are looking into using it as an indicator of El Niño events. Countries surrounding it are also the site of very intense and severe storms. I am hoping to experience such an event while in Darwin.”
Mr Winchester has written and contributed to a number of travel books, but it is his skill in writing narrative non-fiction that has led to his being highly acclaimed in fields as diverse as lexicography/dictionary-making (The Surgeon of Crowthorne, 2000); vulcanology (Krakatoa, 2004): geology (The Map that Changed the World, 2009); craniology (Skulls, 2012); and cognition (The Man with the Electrified Brain, 2013).
He is an Honorary Fellow of St Catherine’s College, Oxford.
The Darwin lecture will be held on November 26 from 5:30pm at Mal Nairn Auditorium, Building Red 7, CDU Casuarina campus.
This is a free event, but bookings are essential. To register E: lebaadmin@cdu.edu.au