Colin  Whittemore:  Writer & illustrator

 

The author protests that, regrettably, it is all true

 

ABROAD:  The author starts his itinerant life by being investigated as a dissident on the wrong side of the iron curtain during the cold war, being haunted by spirits in an Ontario Boarding house, and made a fool of in South Africa at the height of the apartheid regime.  

His professional career as an agricultural research scientist takes him to various parts of world where, as little more than a farm-boy made good, he frequently finds himself bewildered and out of his depth.  Ignorance of the predicaments that he unwittingly falls into seem often his only saving grace.  His naivety gets him into difficulties in Greece, Philippines, Northern Ireland, US and Japan. 

AT HOME:  A bad start and a bumpy ride with a smattering of compensations; scientific and personal.  He achieves senior positions at the University of Edinburgh and a degree of  professional recognition.  All falls away upon retirement and new avenues are sought. In the end he comes to have a jaundiced eye of his profession and what the real drivers of scientific endeavour and technological advance have turned out to be.  

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Colin Whittemore originated from a small family-farm but ended up as Professor of Agriculture and Head of the Institute of Ecology and Resource Management  at The University of Edinburgh.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.  He has a number of books published telling of various aspect of rural life.  The author’s rural upbringing and subsequent academic life completely failed to prepare him for his travels abroad, or for the scientific life at home. 

  

" The difficulty with the truth, he says, is the obligation to tell it.  But the author does not shirk, even to his own disadvantage"

"Cold war intrigue, Ghosts. Good times and Bad business, Insurgency.  Glittering prizes and Hard knocks.  They're all here."

"As he says, life has its surprises".