Gavin Pretor-Pinney

Pretor-Pinney is son of Anthony Robert Edmund Pretor-Pinney and Laura Uppercu, daughter of George Winthrop Haight, of Manhattan, observer for the American Bar Association and a specialist in international law.^[2] The Pretor-Pinney family were landowners at Somerton, Somerset since the 1800s, descendants of the sugar merchant and Mayor of Bristol Charles Pinney; Anthony Pretor-Pinney had Somerton Erleigh, named for the family's former house on a different part of the estate, built in 1972–3.^[3][4]

Pretor-Pinney attended Westminster School, the University of Oxford, and Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.

In 1991, Tom Hodgkinson came up with the idea for a magazine called The Idler, immediately recruiting his friend and neighbour, Pretor-Pinney, to help him develop the concept; they co-founded the magazine, publishing its first issue in 1993.^[5]

In 2004, Pretor-Pinney was asked to speak at a conference, where he gave a talk titled "Inaugural Lecture of the Cloud Appreciation Society"; so many people showed joy and interest in the concept that, in 2005, he founded the Cloud Appreciation Society.^[6]

• 2011 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books, winner, The Wavewatcher's Companion^[7]

• The Cloudspotter's Guide (2006)^[1]
• The Cloud Collector's Handbook (2006)^[1]
• A Pig with Six Legs and Other Clouds (2007)
• The Wavewatcher's Companion (2010)^[1][8][9]
• The Ukulele Handbook (September 2013; co-written with Tom Hodgkinson)
• A Cloud A Day (2019)

• Presented on BBC TV: Cloudspotting^[10]
• Appeared on BBC TV: The Secret Life of Waves^[11]