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Résumé
Neil was born in Glasgow, Scotland, but defected to the east at the age of 18 and lived in Edinburgh for over 30 years. He now lives in Perthshire. (contact details).
Employment
- 1988-present: self-employed freelance writer and photographer
- 1981-1985: petroleum geologist with Exploration Logging Inc, working on oil rigs in Australia, the Mediterranean and the North Sea
Education
- 1985-87: Oxford University - MSc by research, Dept of Earth Sciences
- 1977-81: Edinburgh University - Upper 2nd Class BSc (Hons) in Geology
- 1971-77: Lanark Grammar School - five As and two Bs at Higher Grade
Skills
- 30+ years experience of professional writing and photography
- 20+ years experience of website design and writing
- Completed the Rosenblum TV 4-day video training course in July 2013
- Computer literate in Mac OS X, iOS, HTML, PHP and MySQL
- Extensive experience of Microsoft Word and Excel, Adobe Photoshop, Final Cut Pro
- Languages: can speak and read French, and get by in Turkish and Czech
- Driving licence holder
- Qualified fly casting instructor (Scottish Game Angling Instructors Certificate)
Interests
- Hill-walking, rock-climbing, mountain-biking, sailing, snowboarding, canoeing, fly fishing
- Natural history and geology
- Computers and the internet
- Reading crime fiction
Biography
Like almost every other Lonely Planet author he knows, Neil fell into the guidebook-writing business by accident. Having fled the rat race of the oil industry only four years after graduating as a geologist, he returned to university to do postgraduate research. But academia turned out to be just as dull and constricting as industry, so like any sane person he decided to give it all up to be a penniless freelance writer.
The penniless bit was easy. On the writing side, Neil got a foot in the door producing articles on history and culture for Scottish Field magazine, while still homeless and sleeping on a friend's settee. The friend's flatmate just happened to be an editor with a guidebook publisher in Glasgow. Neil submitted a portfolio of his travel photos and next thing he knew he was off to photograph Corfu for a guidebook.
That was 1988; since then Neil has written and photographed more than 80 guidebooks for a range of publishers. He has authored or co-authored around 50 guides for Lonely Planet, specialising in the UK and Ireland (mainly the Edinburgh, Scotland, and Ireland guidebooks) Eastern Europe (Prague, Czech Republic and Poland) and the Med (Malta and Corsica guidebooks), and has also worked on the first editions of the Lonely Planet guides to Georgia, Armenia & Azerbaijan and Brittany.
In addition to travel guides, Neil has written several non-fiction books, including Ordnance Survey Pathfinder walking guides, Great Sea Disasters and the SAS Guide to Tracking & Navigation (but no, he was never in the SAS!), contributed a series of articles on geology and geography to school textbooks and encyclopedias, had articles published in various newspapers and magazines, and created content for a range of websites.
Neil has been an outdoors enthusiast since childhood and is still an active hill-walker, mountain-biker, sailor, snowboarder, canoeist, fly fisherman and rock-climber. He has climbed and tramped in four continents, including ascents of Jebel Toubkal in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, Mount Kinabalu in northern Borneo, the Old Man of Hoy in Scotland's Orkney Islands and the Northwest Face of Half Dome in California's Yosemite Valley.