After earning a degree in geology from Oxford University, Simon Winchester went to work for a mining company which sent him to Uganda to prospect for copper. Disillusioned with the work, he stumbled upon a book, Coronation Everest, the story of the first team to reach the summit of Mt Everest and the reporters who raced the news back to London.

He promptly abandoned geology for journalism, eventually joining The Guardian, for which he was Northern Ireland Correspondent, a post which earned him honors as Britain's Journalist of the Year, America Correspondent covering the Watergate affair and resignation of U.S. President Richard Nixon, and finally India Correspondent. He left The Guardian to eventually become Chief Foreign Feature Writer for The Sunday Times, managing to be in the Falkland Islands when they were invaded by Argentina and shortly thereafter being captured by Argentinian forces in southern Patagonia.

Sprung three months later, he wandered here and there before settling in Hong Kong, where he remained for 12 years covering a vast territory from Siberia to Tasmania and Burma to Hawaii. It was during this time that he began his remarkable career as a best-selling author, weaving stories of a board range of historical events from the thread of an engaging and accessible style.

Nineteen books later and he's still at it. Most have had their genesis in a question that caught his fancy. Wondering how more than 10,000 definitions in the Oxford Dictionary came to be written by an American Civil War surgeon, while imprisoned for murder in a book-lined cell at England's Broadmoor Lunatic Criminal Asylum led to The Professor and the Madman. Read The Map that Changed the World and wonder no more how one William Smith ended up in debtor's prison after having published a map that completely altered our view of life on earth, revolutionized mining and transportation, and served Charles Darwin as he sailed across the globe. There have been biographies (The Man Who Loved China), cataclysmic thrillers (Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded), and historical commentary; each book of his prodigious literary output is an instant best-seller and eagerly awaited.

The FCCT is most pleased to welcome Simon Winchester to our table as he muses about his many vocations, reminisces about his life as s journalist and author, and ponders the role luck may play in building a career as a writer. If you can at all find time in your schedules, don't miss this program with a unique and uniquely talented man of letters.

Because of the expected high demand, advance bookings are strongly recommended.