He studied geology at Oxford University and thereafter started working in a nickel mine, followed by an assignment to search for copper deposits in Uganda. It was at this point of time when Simon Winchester read Coronation Everest by Jan (then James) Morris, a reporter for The Times who was stationed 25,000 feet up the mountainsside to break the story of summiting the world’s tallest pesk.
There was no turning back from journalism for Simon Winchester after he was through the story of the feat of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. It was followed by correspondence with Morris.
Morris urged him to give up his job as a geologist. The same day he received the letter and got a job as a writer in a newspaper.
He gave up a budding career as a geologist. But he never regretted it.
Morris’s missive encouraged Winchester to take up the ” world’s best job” as a journalist. He was at his job till he passed away at 82 recently.
It would not be a sweeping statement to say that he went everywhere, wrote about everything. In 1969 he has joined The Guardian first as a correspondent based in Newcastle upon Tyne and later as a correspondent in Northern Ireland.
His early years of reporting found him covering the troubles in Northern Ireland placing him around several events of The Troubles. It included Bloody Sunday and Belfast ” Hour of Terror”.
But Winchester’s coverage of shooting to death by British soldiers of Barney Watton drew flak. And it was on the floor of the House of Commons is enough indication that he did not throw in his lot with the powers that be.
Leaving Northern Ireland, Winchester was briefly assigned to what was then Calcutta. It was followed by his becoming a correspondent for The Guardian in Washington, DC where he covered news ranging from Richard Nixon’s administration to the start of Jimmy Carter’s presidency.
While working as the chief foreign feature writer for The Sunday Times he had to undergo a three-month prison term on being suspected of being a spy during the invasion of Falklands Island. Winchester wrote about it in Prison Diary and alson in Outposts: Journeys to the Surviving Relics of the British Empire.
His experience in Northern Ireland led to his first book, In Holy Terror. His second book, American Heartbeat dealt with his travels through American heartland.
But his first successful book was The Professor and the Madman, a New York Times bestseller. The Map that Changed the World focusses on geologist William Smith and fetched him his second New York Times bestseller.
Given his The Holy Terror, one would have naturally expected to finding him filing his despatches from another trouble spots.But he did an U-turn.
Winchester established his name as one of the most erudite and entertaining writers of non-fiction. He penned The Meaning of Everything about the making of Oxford English Dictionary.
But Winchester never hung up his journalistic boots. He travelled from violently splintering Balkan, Yangtze in China to Equatorial Guinea where he survived on ” bananas and stewed rats” Curiosity provoked many of his expeditions.
He wrote compactly about land and sea. His books on Pacific and Atlantic oceans are a pointer to it.
Winchester had an enormous capacity for facts and anecdotes. He had a rare ability to synthesize them.
It illuminated a larger idea ending in his best selling books. A scribe states and analyses facts while an author pens fiction.
Winchester was a combination of both. It made him one of the most compelling storytellers of his
time.
