Tim Severin, explorer/traveller,
author, film-maker and lecturer, made his first expedition by motor cycle along the route
of Marco Polo while still a student at Oxford.
He has sailed a leather boat across the
Atlantic in the wake of St. Brendan the Navigator,
captained an Arab sailing ship from Muscat to China to investigate the
legends of Sindbad the Sailor, steered a replica of
a Bronze Age galley to seek the landfalls of Jason
and the Argonauts and of Ulysses,
ridden the route of the first Crusader
knights across Europe to Jerusalem, travelled on
horse back with nomads of Mongolia in search of the heritage of Genghis Khan, sailed the Pacific on a bamboo raft to test
the theory that ancient Chinese mariners could have
reached to the Americas, retraced the journeys of Alfred Russell
Wallace, Victorian pioneer
naturalist, through the Spice Islands of Indonesia using a 19th century prahu, and traced the
origins of Moby Dick, the great white whale among the aboriginal sea
hunters of the Pacific.
One of his recent quests has been to identify the
‘real’ Robinson Crusoe whose true adventures
marooned on a desert island in the Caribbean provided material for the
fictional exploits of the world’s most famous castaway.
He has written books about all these
adventures, which have won him the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, The Book Of The Sea
Award, a Christopher Prize and the literary medal of the Academie de la Marine. He has
been a regular contributor to the National Geographic Magazine.
He has also recorded his journeys in
documentary films which have become classics of exploration and adventure. At film
festivals they have won prizes for Best Cameraman, Best Film of the Sea and Best Adventure
Film. Collected under the title TIME TRAVELLER,
they have been screened on Discovery Channel, Sky Television, and National
Geographic TV.
In January 2005 he published
VIKING, Odinn's Child, the first volume in
his historical fiction trilogy (Macmillan). Odinn's Child entered the
best seller lists, and was followed by Viking,
Sworn Brother, and Viking King's Man.
The trilogy has been translated into languages ranging from Portuguese
to Korean.
His latest historical novel is Corsair .
Set in the late 17th century, it opens a new action-packed series
recounting the Adventures of Hector Lynch on his voyages to the
farthest shores of the then known world. Watch the
video.
Tim Severin
holds the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society and
the Livingstone Medal of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society.
He has been conferred with the degree of Doctor
of Letters, honoris causa, by Trinity College, Dublin, and by
University College, Cork.
Tim
Severin is available for lectures and has an archive of still photographs and documentary films
covering his various voyages.
Click here to enquire