Gavin Edmund Pretor-Pinney is a British author, known for his books ''The Cloudspotter's Guide'' and ''The Wavewatcher's Companion''.

Early life and education

Pretor-Pinney is son of Anthony Robert Edmund Pretor-Pinney and Laura Uppercu, daughter of George Winthrop Haight, of Manhattan, observer for the

American Bar Association The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students, which is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. Founded in 1878, the ABA's most important stated activities are the setting of aca ...

and a specialist in international law. The Pretor-Pinney family were landowners at

Somerton, Somerset Somerton ( ) is a town and civil parish in the English county of Somerset. It gave its name to the county and was briefly, around the start of the 14th century, the county town, and around 900 was possibly the capital of Wessex. It has held a w ...

since the 1800s, descendants of the sugar merchant and Mayor of Bristol

Charles Pinney Charles Pinney (29 April 179317 July 1867) was a British merchant and local politician in Bristol, England. He was a partner in a family business that ran sugar plantations in the West Indies and owned a number of slaves. Pinney was selected as ma ...

; Anthony Pretor-Pinney had Somerton Erleigh, named for the family's former house on a different part of the estate, built in 1972–3. Pretor-Pinney attended

Westminster School (God Gives the Increase) , established = Earliest records date from the 14th century, refounded in 1560 , type = Public school Independent day and boarding school , religion = Church of England , head_label = Hea ...

, the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

, and

Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design Central Saint Martins is a public tertiary art school in London, England. It is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London. It offers full-time courses at foundation, undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and a variety of sho ...

Career

He co-founded the magazine '' The Idler'' and founded the

Cloud Appreciation Society The Cloud Appreciation Society is a society founded by Gavin Pretor-Pinney from the United Kingdom in January 2005. The society aims to foster understanding and appreciation of clouds, and has over 50,000 members from 120 countries, as of Marc ...

in 2004. He grew up in West London and now also lives in

Somerton Somerton may refer to: Places Australia * Somerton, New South Wales * Somerton Park, South Australia, a seaside Adelaide suburb ** Somerton Man, unsolved case of an unidentified man found dead in 1948 on the Somerton Park beach * Somerton, Victoria ...

Somerset ( en, All The People of Somerset) , locator_map = , coordinates = , region = South West England , established_date = Ancient , established_by = , preceded_by = , origin = , lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset , lor ...

Awards and honours

*2011

Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books The Royal Society Science Books Prize is an annual £25,000 prize awarded by the Royal Society to celebrate outstanding popular science books from around the world. It is open to authors of science books written for a non-specialist audience, and ...

, winner, ''The Wavewatcher's Companion''

Works

*''The Cloudspotter's Guide'' (2006) *''The Cloud Collector's Handbook'' (2006) *''A Pig with Six Legs and Other Clouds'' (2007) *'' The Wavewatcher's Companion'' (2010) *''The Ukulele Handbook'' (September 2013; co-written with Tom Hodgkinson) *''A Cloud A Day'' (2019)

Television appearances

*Presented on BBC TV: Cloudspotting *Appeared on BBC TV: The Secret Life of Waves

References

External links

Cloud Appreciation Society''The Idler'' magazine
Year of birth missing (living people) Living people People educated at Westminster School, London British magazine founders British writers {{UK-writer-stub