Gavin Pretor-Pinney

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 and a specialist in international law. The Pretor-Pinney family were landowners at Somerton, Somerset since the 1800s, descendants of the sugar merchant and Mayor of Bristol Charles Pinney; 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, the University of Oxford, and Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.

Career In 1991, Tom Hodgkinson came up with the idea for a magazine called The Idler, immediately recruiting his friend and neighbour, Pretor-Pinney, to help him develop the concept; they co-founded the magazine, publishing its first issue in 1993.

In 2004, Pretor-Pinney was asked to speak at a conference, where he gave a talk titled "Inaugural Lecture of the Cloud Appreciation Society"; so many people showed joy and interest in the concept that, in 2005, he founded the Cloud Appreciation Society.

Awards and honours

2011 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books, winner, The Wavewatcher's Companion

Works The Cloudspotter's Guide (2006) 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