Gavin Pretor-Pinney

Business adviser, Consultant, Designer, Entrepreneur, Filmmaker, Idea generator, Marketer, Parent, Writer/Editor

I’m founder and Member 001 of the Cloud Appreciation Society, which has over 47,000 members in 120 countries. In 2017, the cloud formation I proposed should have a name of its own was accepted as an official classification by the World Meteorological Organisation. It was the first new cloud type since 1951. I wrote the internationally bestselling Cloudspotter’s Guide and Cloud Collector’s Handbook. My third book, The Wavewatcher’s Companion, won the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books. I have presented television documentaries about the sky for the BBC and Channel 4 and I’m a Visiting Fellow at the Meteorology Department of Reading University and winner of the Royal Meteorological Society’s Michael Hunt award. I co-founded the Idler, a magazine that argues for the importance of downtime in creative thinking, and I formed back in 1998 the first company since the 1920s to import to UK shores absinthe, the banned and infamous alcoholic spirit. My latest book is called A Cloud A Day.

The sky

A few minutes each day with your head in the clouds helps you keep your feet on the ground.