Vanessa Collingridge

Vanessa Collingridge is an author and broadcaster. She is the youngest of five children born and raised in Woking in Surrey, England. [http://www.sundayherald.com/arts/arts/display.var.1362841.0.0.php "You can't pigeonhole me ... because of my magpie brain"] , interview with Stephen Phelan, "Sunday Herald"] [http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/s2.cfm?id=240142002 "Fancy meeting you here ..."] , "The Scotsman", March 4 2002] She studied Geography at Hertford College, Oxford, where she eventually earned a first class MA in 1990, [http://www.take3management.co.uk/vanessa_collingridge.htm Biography at Take 3 Management] ] despite contracting viral encephalitis in her second year which caused an almost fatal swelling of her brain. It was also at Oxford that she met her partner Alan Watt.

After graduating, Collingridge moved immediately to a career in television, first as a question checker on game shows "Wheel of Fortune" and "Win, Lose or Draw", and then for fourteen months as a weathergirl on BBC Scotland, a role for which she is still remembered. She has since worked as a producer and presenter on all five British national terrestrial television channels, as well as BBC national radio.

In 2000 she quit her television presenter's job on "Tonight with Trevor McDonald" to author two biographies, one of eighteenth century explorer James Cook and one of Celtic warrior queen Boudica. During her research for the former, she discovered she shared ancestry with controversial Australian writer and illustrator George Collingridge, who asserted in 1895 that Australia was discovered by the Portuguese. [ [http://www.meettheauthor.com/bookbites/471.html Video clip of Collingridge describing her biography of James Cook] (RealPlayer video)] [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3724/is_200203/ai_n9019298 "The captain and the deflater"] , Sara Wheeler, "The Spectator", March 9 2002]

Collingridge has lived in Scotland since 1989, and resides in a converted farmhouse on the shore of Castle Semple Loch near Lochwinnoch with her partner, and sons Archie, Angus and Finn. [ [http://www.stephenpics.co.uk/pictures2002/ppages/ppage11.htm "Weather girl and now author Vanessa Collingridge at home in Lochwinnoch"] , Stephenpics.co.uk, 2002] She is currently studying to complete her Ph.D. in historical cartography at the University of Glasgow, while working as a broadcaster for BBC Radio Scotland's "Buried Treasure" and BBC Radio 4's "Making History". [http://www.ges.gla.ac.uk:443/postgraduates/vcollingridge "PhD candidates"] , Department of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow]

Bibliography

* "Cook: Obsession and Betrayal in the New World" (2002), Ebury Press, ISBN 0-09-187913-2
* "Boudica" (2005), Ebury Press, ISBN 0-09-189819-6

References