I’ve often alluded to the power of Mother Nature in my blogs and with good reason – it makes mankind look puny by comparison. And so we are but, collectively, we sure pack a big punch. However it might be even bigger than we all previously thought.   Continue Reading

National Geographic has recently included the Blue Lagoon in their special feature on 25 wonders of the world. Not only that but the venerable magazine has also listed Iceland as one of the places to visit in 2012. Continue Reading

I recently visited The Natural History Museum in London with my eldest daughter and was thrilled to discover, on the uppermost balcony overlooking the main entrance hall, the trunk section from a huge sequoia tree felled in 1892. I was immediately reminded of the tree that Reynolds’ Grandfather chops down in The Human Race to make the infamous ‘power table’ for Reynolds Air headquarters. When I got home I went through the photographs I had taken in the museum and felt compelled to re-read that passage from The Human Race: Continue Reading

It’s been a strange four months. Natural disasters have unfurled across the globe with a frightening regularity. The earthquake in Japan is, rightly, uppermost in everyone’s minds but there have been other disasters too. Between November and February, Australia suffered its costliest natural disaster ever as Queensland and Victoria were flooded. In January, Brazil experienced its worst natural disaster in several decades as torrential rainstorms triggered mudslides in the mountainous Serrana region. Christchurch in New Zealand was hit by a 6.3 earthquake, while some flooded areas of Sri Lanka received a year’s supply of rain in one month. The list goes on. The earthquake in Burma. More flooding in the Philippines… Continue Reading

As readers of The Human Race and this blog will know, I am very fond of Iceland. When I was researching my first novel I visited the country twice and came to love everything there: the dormant lava fields, active volcanoes, jittery geology, geothermal power, Northern Lights, the eternal sunshine of summer and the permanent blackness of winter. One thing I discovered during my visits to Iceland and extensive research is that the Icelanders are an incredibly stoic people. They are happy to accept that Mother Nature rules the roost, sometimes with a fiery fist. Everywhere you turn she dominates the ever-shifting landscape and you can’t escape her embrace. The Icelanders have given up trying. They have learnt to live alongside her and mould their lives accordingly to her steady, if somewhat unpredictable beat. We could all probably learn a lesson or two from this approach. Continue Reading

Until last week I had never heard of Yann Arthus-Bertrand, the aerial photographer who spent two years filming the earth from a helicopter. The result of his unusual work was his bestselling book The Earth from the Air, which was published in 2010 and has already sold a staggering 3.5 million copies. His website is well worth a look and it made me realise that although I hadn’t heard his name until relatively recently, I recognised many of his photos. A photographer at his best, I suspect.

One photograph in particular struck a memory chord and upon reflection, I realised that I had seen it before. In fact it provided part of the inspiration for one of the iconic scenes in The Human Race. It is Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s image of the Blue Lagoon in Iceland, pictured above. Continue Reading