The Map That Changed the World, Simon Winchester. Book 3

I've been a while since the last book - mainly because this one was a teency bit of a slug and I'm in the middle of another three books as well.

Mr Winchester - Details: The guy has an OBE (services to journalism & literature and rightly so). Born in 1944. Studied geology – hence the knowledge of William Smith, I guess. Worked as a foreign correspondent for The Guardian for 20 years, he now does stuff for Conde Nast Traveler, Smithsonian Museum, Nat Geo and reviews books for New York Times (somebody slow this man down!).

He was also held captive in the Falklands by Argentinian forces – mamma mia!

He got his start in journalism by A, just deciding to be a journalist one day, then B, calling countless newspapers until one took him on as a junior reporter. This was in the 60s. Do you know how hard it is to get work in any sort of publishing nowadays! Don’t start me – and baby boomers complain that the young folk nowadays don’t want to work. If it were that easy – I’d be head editor of the New York Review by now!

Anyway, regardless of dubiously smoothly-pathed career beginnings, Simon W is a legend. His interests include letterpress printing, bee-keeping, astronomy, stamp-collecting, model railways and cider-making.

I recommend having a further look at his bio – it is fascinating.

So. I generally love a bit of the Simon in my literary non-fiction. But this time, I'm underwhelmed, I must say. The story of William Smith who put together the first geological map of Britain. He figured out the whole strata-fossil relationship and that strata was in fact just that - stratified layers of rock and other bits and pieces (I ain't no geologist). The story isn't that thrilling I'm afraid. Winchester I think does his absolute best but William Smith was a fairly boring personality in the science world and not much can be done about that.
Ooh - found a new word in this book - chamfered.
Winchester emphasises early on the importance of this map to the entire world and to humanity and it's consequences for mining/trade/religion/science, etc. The reader can't not understand this if they read the book, but Will is a bit of non-entity. I appreciate that he worked extremely hard to prove his theory of stratified rock once he cottoned on to the idea, and I heartily bemoan the fact that the twitty-snobs who ruled the roost in Geological circles ripped him off and ignored his existence. It's crap that he went into debtor's prison for 10 weeks and that he married a loony. These last two tantalising pieces of information are barely dealt with because of lack of historical data on it. This malady affects much of William Smith's life and thus Winchester is left with repetition of what he does know and a lot of conjecture. One middle chapter is a lively account of Simon's own youth and his journey in William's footsteps through a small section of Britain. This chapter glows with vigour and life. The rest of the book feels dead in comparison.
We are taken through coal mining, canal building at it's driest and descriptions of strata.
Winchester makes the mistake, I feel of letting the reader know pretty much everything that happens to William Smith in advance. We know he is the first to 'discover' strata, we know he is going to go broke, go to prison, then get invited back to London in his late years to receive full accolades for his work. This is revealed early on in what feels like an effort to hype up the text. I just wanted it to end.
I could go on and on, which I'm afraid Winchester did for far too long. So I'll stop her and say that on a Winchester scale, I'm giving this a big fat 3/10.