Nicholas Rankin
Nicholas Rankin is an English writer and broadcaster.
Biography
Rankin was born in Yorkshire, England, but grew up in Kenya. His father was born in Glasgow. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and Christ Church, Oxford. He has lived and worked in Bolivia and Catalonia, Spain.He worked for the BBC World Service for 20 years. He was Chief Producer, Arts, at the BBC World Service, when his eight-part series on ecology and evolution, A Green History of the Planet, won two UN awards.
He currently works as a freelance writer and broadcaster and lives in London with his wife, the novelist Maggie Gee. He has one daughter, Rosa.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2009.
Books
- Dead Man's Chest: Travels after Robert Louis Stevenson. London, Faber and Faber, 1987.
- Telegram from Guernica: The Extraordinary Life of George Steer, War Correspondent. London: Faber and Faber, 2003.
- Ian Fleming's Commandos: The Story of 30 Assault Unit in WWII. London: Faber and Faber, 2011.
Critical studies and reviews of Rankin's work
;Churchill's Wizards- Reviewed by Andrew Roberts,, in The Sunday Telegraph
- Reviewed by Michael Bywater,, in The Daily Telegraph
- Reviewed by William Boyd,, in The Guardian
- Reviewed by Robert Macfarlane,, in The Observer
- Reviewed by D. J. Taylor,, in The Guardian
- a critical assessment is included in Lesley Graham's essay "Questions of Identity on the Stevenson Trail in Scotland", in Brown, Ian and Desmarest, Clarisse Godard,, Writing Scottishness: Literature and the Shaping of Scottish National Identities, Association for Scottish Literature, Glasgow, pp. 138 - 156,