Vanessa Collingridge

Dr Vanessa Collingridge is a broadcaster and writer, specialising in science, history and the environment. After graduating with a First in Geography from Oxford, she moved into television, radio and print journalism. Her first book, the bestselling biography Captain Cook (Ebury Press/Random House, 2002), explored the interior and exterior worlds of the man behind the legendary navigator. Made into a multi-award-winning drama-documentary series (which she co-wrote and presented), it has been screened around the world and adapted for the BBC.

Her other books include the biography Boudica: The True Story of Britain’s Warrior Queen (Ebury Press, 2006) and the illustrated popular history The Story of Australia (Carlton Press, 2008). She has contributed to a range of books on exploration, history, mapping, and landscape, including The Great Journeys in History (Thames & Hudson, 2006) and The Great Explorers (Thames & Hudson, 2010), alongside academic books and journals on everything from travel writing to fake news and feminism.

Vanessa has lived and worked in all seven continents on Earth, including the Antarctic — the focus of much of her academic work. Always up for a challenge, she qualified as a cosmonaut (!) in Russia’s space tourism programme, and in lockdown published her first poem and qualified as a mediator in conflict resolution. After three years broadcasting in Asia and teaching writing and presenting at universities around the world, she now works in Scotland, where she lives with her partner, their four sons, two cats, a dog, an African hedgehog and an axolotl…