Craig Weatherhill

Craig Weatherhill in Truro in 2008.

Craig Weatherhill (born 1950) is a Cornish author both of fiction and non-fiction works about Cornwall.

Biography

Raised in St Just in Penwith and then in Falmouth, after serving in the forces he developed a career in conservation and architecture. In his younger days, the 6' 3" Weatherhill was a goalkeeper, playing for clubs such as Falmouth Town and Plymouth Argyle. He also played in goal for Cornwall at youth level. He played on for several years—his last match (for Pendeen Rovers) being at the age of 48—despite surgery on his spine following serious injury whilst serving with the Royal Air Force in 1972, from which he made a good recovery.^{[citation needed]} He has been a keen horseman for most of his life and a keen scuba-diver and sailor in his younger years.^{[citation needed]}

He conducted extensive archaeological surveys of West Cornwall under the tutelage of P. A. S. Pool, the Cornish historian. His reconstruction of West Cornwall courtyard houses (drawings and artwork) is now the accepted form for these buildings. Weatherhill published two works on Cornish prehistoric and early medieval archaeology: Belerion and Cornovia. An updated version of Cornovia, was published by Halsgrove of Wellington, Somerset, in April 2009.

His works of fiction include The Lyonesse Stone and Seat of Storms, with the third in the trilogy, The Tinners' Way published in hardback in 2010. In November 2009, 'The Lyonesse Stone' was published in Cornish by Evertype, with the title Jowal Lethesow--one of the longest novels to be translated into the Cornish language. In December 2009 his novel Nautilus was published, 15 years in the making and a modern sequel to the Jules Verne classics Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas and The Mysterious Island, remaining faithful to the original works of Verne, despite its 21st-century setting. His next literary project is to be a novel entitled 'The Amezola Log', running a modern-day mystery alongside the events of July 1595, when four Spanish galleys raided the western side of Mount's Bay, Cornwall.^{[citation needed]}

His father, Lieutenant A. W. Weatherhill, RN (electrical branch, Fleet Air Arm; 1909–1983), was instrumental in the development of radar and of the sonobuoy.^{[citation needed]}

Weatherhill is a passionate campaigner about Cornwall, its language, culture and people, and has spoken out publicly about the environment, erosion of Cornish culture, constitutional and linguistic rights for the Cornish speaking population—a stance that eventually cost him his 24-year local government career. Over the years, he has given hundreds of lectures to a wide variety of organisations, including the Tate Gallery and has frequently appeared on BBC Radio Cornwall, and on television, as both historian and actor on horseback; notably ITV's Time Travels - The Battle of Vellan-druchar and Westcountry Tales - The Lost Land of Lyonesse.

Weatherhill is one of Cornwall’s foremost experts on place-names,^[1] and is one of the leading historical and language contributors to Cornish World magazine.^[2] In August 2009, he delivered a lecture on the place-names of Cornwall to the International Celtic Congress held in Sligo.

Books by Craig Weatherhill

Nonfiction

• The Principal Antiquities of the Land’s End District, with P.A.S Pool MA, FSA and Professor Charles Thomas (Cornwall Archaeological Society 1980)
• Belerion: Ancient Sites of Land’s End (Alison Hodge 1981, 1985; Halsgrove 1989, 2000)
• Cornovia: Ancient Sites of Cornwall & Scilly (Alison Hodge 1985; Halsgrove 1997, 2000)
• Myths & Legends of Cornwall with Paul Devereux (Sigma Press 1994, 1997)
• Cornish Place Names & Language (Sigma Press 1995, 1998, 2000) ISBN 1-85058-462-1
• Place Names in Cornwall & Scilly (Wessex/Westcountry Books 2005)
• Cornish Place Names & Language Completely revised edition (Sigma Press 2007) ISBN 978-1-85058-837-5
• Cornovia: Ancient Sites of Cornwall and Scilly, 4000 BC – 1000 AD (Halsgrove 2009)
• A Concise Dictionary of Cornish Place-Names (Evertype 2009) ISBN 978-1-904808-22-0

Fiction

• The Lyonesse Stone (Tabb House 1991)
• Seat of Storms (Tabb House 1995)
• The Tinners’ Way (Tabb House hardback 2010, paperback in press)
• Jowal Lethesow—The Lyonesse Stone in Cornish (Evertype 2009) ISBN 978-1-904808-30-5
• Nautilus (Evertype, 2009) ISBN 978-1-904808-40-4

See also

Novels portal

• Cornish language
• Agan Tavas

References

1. ^ Craig Weatherhill, Cornwall’s foremost expert on place-names
2. ^ Cornish World - Anglo-Cornish War of June-August 1549

Persondata
Name	Weatherhill, Craig
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Date of birth	1950
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death