Craig Weatherhill is a Cornish

Cornish people

The Cornish are a people associated with Cornwall, a county and Duchy in the south-west of the United Kingdom that is seen in some respects as distinct from England, having more in common with the other Celtic parts of the United Kingdom such as Wales, as well as with other Celtic nations in Europe...

 author both of fiction and non-fiction works about Cornwall

Cornwall

Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...

.

Biography

Raised in St Just in Penwith

St Just in Penwith

St Just is a town and civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The parish encompasses the town of St Just and the nearby settlements of Trewellard, Pendeen and Kelynack: it is bounded by the parishes of Morvah to the north-east, Sancreed and Madron to the east, St Buryan and Sennen to...

 and then in Falmouth

Falmouth, Cornwall

Falmouth is a town, civil parish and port on the River Fal on the south coast of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It has a total resident population of 21,635.Falmouth is the terminus of the A39, which begins some 200 miles away in Bath, Somerset....

, 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

Royal Air Force

The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...

 in 1972, from which he made a good recovery. He has been a keen horseman for most of his life and a keen scuba-diver and sailor in his younger years.

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

Wellington, Somerset

Wellington is a small industrial town in rural Somerset, England, situated south west of Taunton in the Taunton Deane district, near the border with Devon, which runs along the Blackdown Hills to the south of the town...

, 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

Michael Everson

Michael Everson is a linguist, script encoder, typesetter, and font designer. His central area of expertise is with writing systems of the world, specifically in the representation of these systems in formats for computer and digital media...

, 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

Jules Verne

Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...

 classics Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas and The Mysterious Island

The Mysterious Island

The Mysterious Island is a novel by Jules Verne, published in 1874. The original edition, published by Hetzel, contains a number of illustrations by Jules Férat. The novel is a sequel to Verne's famous Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and In Search of the Castaways, though thematically it is...

, 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

Carlos de Amésquita

Carlos de Amésquita was a Spanish naval officer of the 16th century. He is remembered for an action whilst on a routine patrol, known as the Battle of Cornwall, during the Anglo-Spanish War 1585–1604....

 Log', running a modern-day mystery alongside the events of July 1595, when four Spanish galleys

Battle of Cornwall

The Battle of Cornwall was a Spanish raid in Cornwall in 1595 during the Anglo-Spanish war of 1585-1604. It was the only attempted Spanish raid of the area since Fernando Sánchez de Tovar's destruction of English coastal towns in the 14th century.-Landings:...

 raided the western side of Mount's Bay

Mount's Bay

Mount's Bay is a large, sweeping bay on the English Channel coast of Cornwall in the United Kingdom, stretching from the Lizard Point to Gwennap Head on the eastern side of the Land's End peninsula. Towards the middle of the bay is St Michael's Mount...

, Cornwall.

His father, Lieutenant A. W. Weatherhill, RN (electrical branch, Fleet Air Arm

Fleet Air Arm

The Fleet Air Arm is the branch of the British Royal Navy responsible for the operation of naval aircraft. The Fleet Air Arm currently operates the AgustaWestland Merlin, Westland Sea King and Westland Lynx helicopters...

; 1909–1983), was instrumental in the development of radar and of the sonobuoy

Sonobuoy

A sonobuoy is a relatively small expendable sonar system that is dropped/ejected from aircraft or ships conducting anti-submarine warfare or underwater acoustic research....

.

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

Tate Gallery

The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...

 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, and is one of the leading historical and language contributors to Cornish World magazine. In August 2009, he delivered a lecture on the place-names of Cornwall to the International Celtic Congress held in Sligo

Sligo

Sligo is the county town of County Sligo in Ireland. The town is a borough and has a charter and a town mayor. It is sometimes referred to as a city, and sometimes as a town, and is the second largest urban area in Connacht...

.

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