Simon Winchester
| Simon Winchester | |
|---|---|
Winchester in New York City, 2013
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|
| Born |
28 September 1944 London, England |
| Education | University of Oxford, Geology, 1966 |
| Occupation | Journalist, author |
| Employer | The Guardian |
| Spouse(s) | Setsuko Sato |
| Website | simonwinchester |
Simon Winchester, OBE (born 28 September 1944), is a British author and journalist who resides in Massachusetts, in the United States. Through his career at The Guardian, Winchester covered numerous significant events, including Bloody Sunday and the Watergate Scandal. As an author, Winchester has written or contributed to more than a dozen nonfiction books, has written one novel, and his articles have appeared in several travel publications, including Condé Nast Traveler, Smithsonian Magazine, and National Geographic.
Born in London, Winchester attended several boarding schools in Dorset. He spent a year hitchhiking around the United States, then in 1963 went up to St Catherine's College, Oxford to study geology. He graduated in 1966 with a degree in geology and found work with Falconbridge of Africa, a Canadian mining company. His first assignment was to work as a field geologist searching for copper deposits in Uganda.
While on assignment in Uganda, Winchester happened upon a copy of James Morris's Coronation Everest – an account of the 1953 expedition that led to the first successful ascent of Mount Everest. Reading the book instilled in Winchester the desire to be a writer, so he sought career advice from Morris by mail. Morris urged Winchester to give up geology the very day he received the letter, and get a job as a writer on a newspaper.
In 1969 Winchester joined The Guardian, first as a regional correspondent based in Newcastle upon Tyne, but later as its Northern Ireland correspondent. Winchester's time in Northern Ireland placed him around several events of The Troubles, including the events of Bloody Sunday and the Belfast Hour of Terror. In 1971 Winchester became involved in controversy over British press coverage of Northern Ireland when he was denounced on the floor of the House of Commons by Bernadette Devlin for his part in justifying the shooting to death of Berney Watt by British soldiers.
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