NANTUCKET: 41°17’0” north latitude / 70°6’0” west latitude. Nantucket, Massachusetts. A small island situated twenty-six miles off the eastern coast of mainland Massachusetts, a veritable sandbar randomly situated in the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. And the perfect setting for a discussion by internationally best-selling author Simon Winchester, who will present a lecture on his latest book, Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories, on Thursday, August 25, at 7 PM in the Nantucket Historical Association’s Whaling Museum at 13 Broad Street.
Those who travel to this faraway island know that oftentimes the route is circuitous, so it should come as no surprise that Mr. Winchester’s own path to Nantucket has been colorful and roundabout. The Oxford-educated Englishman has spent time dog-sledding across Greenland, working for a mining company in Uganda and drilling for oil in the North Sea. After what he termed a “Pauline conversion,” Winchester turned his sights on journalism, and in addition to covering the Northern Ireland uprising – including Bloody Sunday – he was also named the United Kingdom’s Journalist of the Year in 1971. During his tenure as a newspaperman, Winchester was dispatched to various far-flung locales, including Calcutta, Siberia, Tasmania and Hong Kong.
In 1998, the world was introduced to the literary tour de force that is Simon Winchester with the publication of The Professor and the Madman, the fascinating true-life account of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. Since that auspicious beginning, Winchester has penned a library’s worth of books. The twenty-first book to date by the prolific writer, Atlantic traces a thousand years’ worth of mankind’s explorations, discoveries and various other activities in the 41,100,000 square miles of water that compose this vast expanse of sea in which we find ourselves situated. Through his excellent research and engrossing anecdotes about the ocean as a living thing, Winchester spotlights its inspiration on poets, painters and writers, even as our waters are rapidly changing from pollution, overfishing and climate change. Publishers Weekly referred to Winchester’s “biography” of the Atlantic as “necessary reading for those who want to understand the planet better,” and the Wall Street Journal called it “a lively, lyrical telling of the ocean’s story.”
Simon Winchester will speak at the Whaling Museum, 13 Broad Street, on Thursday August 25 at 7 PM. Tickets for the event are $25 and may be purchased at the door or in advance by calling Melissa Kershaw at the Nantucket Historical Association at 508-228-1894, ext. 117.
