News

Opinion

Editorials

Simon Winchester went everywhere, wrote about everything

If curiosity provoked his many expeditions, his enormous capacity for facts and anecdotes and the ability to synthesise them so that a larger idea may be illuminated is what made him one of the most popular storytellers of his time.

Correspondence with Morris encouraged Winchester, who died this week at 82, to abandon a budding career as a geologist and take up the “world’s best job” as a journalist.

2 min read Nov 6, 2026 06:20 AM IST First published on: Nov 6, 2026 at 06:20 AM IST

It wouldn’t be too much to describe Simon Winchester’s first encounter with the world of journalism as constituting a Damascene conversion.…