Gillian Jones

I was born and grew up in the Home Counties of England, nurtured in the 'Garden of England' I combine a love of the environment and the excitement of travel with my fascination for weaving compelling stories. I travelled as a teacher of English in Europe, South America and the Middle East before returning to my roots in Kent. My Water Trilogy makes use of all these elements. 'Blade of Light', the first of the Trilogy', moves between Kent, the City of London and the rainforests of the Amazon. The second in the series, 'The FARIS Affair' catches up with my hero, Anisha, in London, but then travels to Spain, Oman and the unknown (to me) territories of the 'Stan republics' of Kyrgestan and Uzbekistan: head-spinning stuff, as Anisha found. The final in the set returns to the south of England where fracking near underground aquifers is causing public concern. The series sees Anisha evolve from campaigning student, 'ethical' city worker to post-graduate PhD student and water systems expert.

In contrast, my award-winning 'A Misted Mirror' explores the puzzles in the life and poetry of my late husband in a genre which intertwines fiction and memory, quite different from the suspenseful stories of the 'Water Trilogy'. In 2019 I turned to biography. 'Under the Microscope' is a work of 'creative non-fiction' in that it uses details from carefully researched documents to bring to life the figure of Victorian minister of the church and scientist in the field of microscopy, the Reverend William Henry Dallinger. dallinger's life saw the clash between science and religion and fiercely contested debates about the origin of life which continue to this day. Thomas Huxley, 'Darwin's bulldog' and John Tyndale were involved in the arguments conducted in the glare of publicity.

Covid lockdown was rendered more endurable as I dived into more biographies; this time scientific figures of the 18th and early 19th centuries living and working in France, England, the Caribbean and South America. The result is the volume of short Essays, Pierre Poivre and the Networking Environmentalists of the 18th century.

There are themes that run through my work, but I dont spend my whole time at my desk; I have a 'cobnut plat'. Cobnuts are a feature of a particular part of the Kent landscape where I grew up. My family had two acres of these nut-bearing trees which, in other parts of the world, are known either as hazels or as filberts. Here in Kent they are 'cobnuts' and in 2012 I took on the management of a five-acre 'plat' or orchard which had been neglected and was then a veritable jungle. With some fund-raising activities to cover the cost of the heavy chain-saw work and a gang of willing volunteers, the result some three years later was a recognisable orchard and once again a commercial enterprise productive enough to cover its annual maintenance costs and a bit more. It is a year-round delight, from bare-leafed trees in winter, emerging catkins blowing in the March winds and a haven for wildflowers throughout spring and autumn. There is a lot to learn about the science of nut-growing; how the minute red star-like flowers are pollinated by pollen dust from the flying tails of catkins, even before winter is over; how the fertilised flowers remain dormant for several months before the small 'nutkins' appear, filling out over the summer to be harvested in the early days of September. Science and environment, travel and story-telling; these are the themes which run through my books.