Gavin pretor pinney biography for kids

Robin Mills went to Somerton, Somerset, to meet Gavin Pretor-Pinney. This is his story.

“I was born and brought up in London, but my father is from here in Somerset, and my mother’s from the States, from New York. In the 1970s, they built the house they now live in, so from around that time we would come down here regularly for weekends and holidays. So I’ve always had a connection to this area, and the Pinney family are from West Dorset. I have an older brother, Giles, and a sister, Jenny, who also live locally.

I studied all sciences at Westminster School. I was a bit of a science nerd. I got into Oxford to read philosophy and physics, but ended up changing to philosophy and psychology. It was the philosophy that I enjoyed, but you can’t do that on its own at Oxford, nor was it particularly vocational, so afterwards I went to Central St Martins in London to do an MA in graphic design. I went from studying the sciences to the arts, which felt particularly enriching as I had no arts background—no O level or A level art, nor a foundation course. This distinguished me from the others on the course. At the end, the tutors confessed that they couldn’t think what sort of job would be suitable for me. They said I’d have to go and create one of my own. I didn’t have any clear idea of what I’d end up doing; I’ve always just pursued what interested me, and never had a five year plan. Sometimes I think life would have been a lot easier if I had.

My first job was the launch art director for a newspaper/magazine called the Modern Review, which was founded by columnist Julie Birchill and writer Toby Young. I worked there for its first year. After that, I was freelancing as a designer, when a friend from school, Tom Hodgkinson, asked if I’d like to help out with his idea for a magazine, called the Idler. We started that in 1993, so this year is the publication’s 20th anniversary. I art directed it, he edited it, but as a two man team we both did a lot o

14th October 2024 @ 16:00 – 17:00

An introduction to the wondrous world of clouds, by the internationally bestselling founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society and a prize-winning children’s book author and illustrator.

Have you ever watched a cloud being born?

Clouds come in all manner of shapes and sizes, from low-lying Stratus to high-flying Cirrus via roll clouds, banner clouds and tornados. This beautifully illustrated guide reveals the facts, secrets and stories of all the major cloud types, and how they shape the weather around them. We learn their fancy Latin names, explore the parts of the sky where they like to hang out, marvel at the ways they play with sunlight – and even visit them on other planets, where they are sometimes made of acid.

Cloudspotting for Beginners will inspire curious minds with a lifelong sense of meteorological wonder.

Gavin Pretor-Pinney is founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, which has more than 47,000 members in 120 countries. He is the author of the internationally bestselling Cloudspotter’s Guide and Cloud Collector’s Handbook. His third book, The Wavewatcher’s Companion, won the prestigious Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books. Gavin is a TED Global speaker with over 1.2 million views. He has presented television documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4 and is a Visiting Fellow at the Meteorology Department of Reading University and winner of the Royal Meteorological Society’s Michael Hunt award.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

BR: People could also formally apply to be members on the website, right? What did that entail?

GPP: If you applied, I’d send you a badge and a certificate. I just printed those out on my color printer at home, but I made them special by including the member’s name and membership number on them.

Around the time of starting the society, a friend told me I had to give people a membership number, saying “people pretend that they don’t want to be a number, but actually people love being a number. So I knew early on that having a number actually gives it shows your sort of part of something.

We also had a manifesto right from the start too because I felt like there was humor in the contrast. All these serious things — the manifesto, the membership number and the badges — were all in support of these things that are so ephemeral and light and airy and momentary and transient.

“Images came flooding in.”

BR: How did you grow the society from those first talk attendees to so many more folks?

GPP: I’ve never done any sort of advertising for the society.The community started to grow as a result of people telling people. Fortunately, it’s very easy for members to explain the society to someone else. The name says it all.

BR: What do you think has motivated members to spread the word?

GPP: If an idea is something that people want to tell other people about, then you don’t need to do any marketing to kind of build up a reasonably good community. But in order for an idea to be something that people want to tell other people about, they need to believe that thing will reflect well on them.

The society does that at the moment. People feel it reflects well on them because it shows that they look at the world and a slightly different way.

BR: For you, what does being a member of The Cloud Appreciation Society communicate about that person?

GPP: If you start looking at t

PERSONAL:

Born c. 1970; companion's name Liz; children: Flora Cirrus. Education: Graduate of the Westminster School, Oxford University, and Central St. Martins, London, England.

ADDRESSES:

Office—The Cloud Appreciation Society, 48 Lothrop St., London W10 4JD, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Journalist, writer, and designer. Cloud Appreciation Society, London, England, founder and chairman; founder of Idler magazine.

WRITINGS:

The Cloudspotter's Guide, Hodder & Stoughton (London, England), 2006, published as The Cloudspotter's Guide: The Science, History, and Culture of Clouds, chapter illustrations by Bill Sanderson, Perigee Book (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

In his first book, published in the United States as The Cloudspotter's Guide: The Science, History, and Culture of Clouds, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, provides an in-depth look at clouds. He covers topics such as the ten fundamental kinds of clouds (including their subtypes) and how to distinguish them. He also provides a lesson on how clouds form and the various weather patterns associated with clouds. In the book, which an Economist contributor referred to as "a fondly compiled compendium of the nebulous world's facts and fancies," the author discusses clouds in literature and religion and how they have influenced historic battles. The book's final chapter tells of the author's trip to Australia to view the "Morning Glory," a spectacular cloud that can cover 600 miles and is a favorite among serious cloud watchers. Although several reviewers commented that better, full-color photographs would have enhanced the book, The Cloudspotter's Guide generally was praised by the critics. Noting that "the book covers the subject in a most inviting manner," Stanley David Gedzelman also wrote in Weatherwise: "Its rambling quality adds to the book's charm and value." A Kirkus Reviews contributor ca