Gavin Pretor-Pinney
Gavin Pretor-Pinney is a designer and writer. He founded the Cloud Appreciation Society in 2004 and is author of the bestseller The Cloudspotter’s Guide, described by the Financial Times as “eloquent and engaging”. Pretor-Pinney is also the co-founder of The Idler magazine, a bi-annual publication dedicated to the restoration of the art of loafing. At this year’s Port Eliot Festival, he’ll be telling us all about fire…
Everyone loves standing and staring into the flickering flames of a bonfire but how many of us know what fire actually is? Gavin will explore the science behind fire, the practicalities of building a good one and why it holds such a magnetic attraction to us all. As a finale, he’ll spontaneously self-combust. All pyromanics welcome.
Founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, which now boasts over 4,000 worldwide members and was ‘launched’ at the 2004 Port Eliot Festival, Gavin’s The Cloudspotter’s Guide was turned down by 28 publishers before finding a home with Sceptre. Now a bestseller, its reviews underline both the relevance of the subject matter and the lost opportunity of several publishing houses. The Metro said “his style is genial, his enthusiasm uplifting and his book nothing less than a subtle but glorious mantra for a way of life”, while the Daily Mail urged, “Read this eye-opening and amusingly written book and you will realise that, beautiful as they are, clouds are not just there for decoration – they are truly awesome things.”
Gavin is also the co-founder, with Tom Hodgkinson, of The Idler Magazine and as heads of Idle Industries they worked on creative development for such clients as the Guardian and Channel 4. He has also contributed to the new Caught By The River book, and will be reading from his chapter with other Caught By The River friends on Sunday afternoon.
www.cloudappreciationsociety.org
“Designed by the author in the same old-school style he brought to The Idler, it is also elegantly written…a neat mixture of explanatory oomph and comic crispness; when it comes to the somewhat inevitable anthropomorphic analogies, the low, misty stratus is ‘not only the annoying friend who stands too close’ but also ‘the one who doesn’t know when it’s time to leave’, while strato- cumulus is ‘always in transition’ and therefore ‘not unlike the pop singer Cher at the height of her costume-changing stage routines’.”
John Harris, The Guardian
Links:
- Interview with Londonist
- Interview in The Telegraph
Video:
Gavin Pretor-Pinney talks at howies’ The Do Lectures:
Gavin Pretor-Pinney talks at Google:
