Alumni engagement and philanthropy



MEET TIM ECOTT - WRITER, JOURNALIST, BROADCASTER AND QUEEN'S GRADUATE

27 March 2020

Non-fiction writer, journalist and broadcaster Tim Ecott – Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, member of the British Guild of Travel Writers, of the Society of Authors and of the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, and a Queen’s Social Anthropology graduate (BA 1983) – is among a select group of individuals…currently trying to learn Faroese.

Born in Newtownards in County Down, Tim’s father, Stuart, was English, while his mother, Pamela, had family roots in Northern Ireland. Like his father, Tim’s father-in-law – and several of his siblings – served in the army, resulting in Tim’s family moving around the world from one military posting to another. 

Tim grew up in the coastal townland of Ballyholme and attended the nearby Bangor Grammar School. In his final year at school, his parents and two siblings immigrated to South Africa, before Tim applied to Queen’s, originally to read English Literature but changing to Social Anthropology.

“I commuted from Bangor and Orlock in the first two years and then moved to Belfast and lived in College Green House on College Green, at the end of Botanic Gardens,” Tim explained.

“Friends joked that I had rented the flat nearest to the Social Anthropology department – which was true as at the time it was housed at 29/30 University Square!”

Special memories for Tim of his four years at University include – in addition, of course, to studying – spending time rowing (an activity he kept up long after leaving University) and visiting Queen’s Film Theatre (QFT). He also recalls doing a lot of walking and availing of the facilities in the Students’ Union, recently demolished to make way for a new Student Centre.   

“I spent many hours in the stacks in the library – and as many again on the River Lagan rowing – and I went to the QFT every week,” said Tim. “And walking up and down Botanic Avenue, in fact walking almost everywhere; for some reason I never acquired a bike!

“I had lunch most days in the Students' Union refectory and often used the showers there because my flat only had a very slow, expensive immersion heater,” he added.

Throughout his time at Queen’s, when family life was rather chaotic, the University represented a safe haven.

“The Queen's time is probably the most interesting and the happiest. One of the most significant elements of that period was being encouraged by the Professor of Anthropology, the late John Blacking. He was an extremely energetic personality, and very inspiring. 

“I relished every minute of University and loved my subjects – English, Anthropology and Greek and Roman Civilisation,” said Tim from his home near Oxford, where he lives with his wife Jessica and two children, both of whom are now of university age.

“I had fantastic tutors like Angela Wilcox and John Cronin (English) and for Anthropology, Graham MacFarlane, Kay Milton and Hastings Donnan – now Professor Donnan, Director of The Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice.”

After graduating from Queen’s Tim won a Department of Education scholarship to pursue postgraduate studies at Cambridge (1985), and later earned a Fellowship in International Affairs at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (1991), by which time he had already worked in the film industry and moved to the BBC World Service in Africa. He has a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship at Exeter College, Oxford (2018-2020), and is UK Trustee for the Central Caribbean Marine Institute.

Throughout a busy career, Tim Ecott was a scriptwriter for the highly-acclaimed Deep Blue (a BBC feature length movie of the Blue Planet series); a regular contributor to UK broadsheets and magazines on marine environment, arts and books; producer of the Man to Manta documentary for ITV, which starred Martin Clunes; a contributor to the QI television programme and books; a marine consultant to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Big Fish Fight series for Channel 4; and a consultant for the Lion TV series The Spice Trail with Kate Humble.

Drawing on his time as a current affairs correspondent specialising in Africa and the Indian Ocean, Tim has also found time to write a number of non-fiction books:

  • Neutral Buoyancy: Adventures in a Liquid World (Penguin UK & Grove Atlantic USA, 2001), a bestseller largely researched underwater
  • Vanilla: travels in search of the luscious substance (Penguin, UK & Grove Atlantic, 2004)
  • Stealing Water: A Secret Life in an African City (Sceptre & Hodder, 2008), a memoir about his childhood in Ireland and Africa
  • The Story of Seychelles (Outer Island Books, 2015)
  • Michael Adams: A Monograph (on the life and work of the Seychelles painter, published in 2018)

Tim’s latest book – The Land of Maybe: A Faroe Islands Year published in hardback by Short Books earlier this month, covers the seasonal cycle of the lives of the 50,000 inhabitants that make up the (18) Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic. Focusing on the challenges of nature, the beautiful landscape and the unique culture of the Islands, it also explains why Tim has been trying to learn Faroese.

Widely lauded, the publication has received enthusiastic reviews, among them this from Spice Trail colleague and presenter Kate Humble: “The tough, mystical, intangible character of the Faroes is captured by Ecott's gorgeously rich and descriptive writing that makes you believe you can smell the sea, hear the birds and feel the wind. A beautiful and evocative read.” Meanwhile, Scottish writer and performer, A.L. Kennedy calls it “a raven-haunted love-song to island living, full of loving detail, humour and heart”, while American travel writer and novelist, Paul Theroux, said: “In this excellent book, Ecott's evocative telling makes me want to go to this weird and wonderful place.”

Apart from his writing and media work, Tim qualified as a Dive Master – a hobby and skill he learned during two years in the Seychelles – which clearly accounts for his first book Neutral Buoyancy and his fourth on the Indian Ocean archipelago. A member of the Professional Association of Diving Instructors since 1994, this has afforded him a chance to dive all around the world from the dark waters of the Arctic Circle to the more temperate around Ireland.

A passionate environmentalist, Tim remains a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4's From Our Own Correspondent while also writing widely on the natural world, including in reports for World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and promotional literature for high end luxury and ecological hotels and nature reserves.

Talking recently about his time at Queen’s to Linda Stewart in the Belfast Telegraph he said: “I loved every minute of being there and was sorry when it came to an end.

“Queen’s was a little bubble or oasis of peace. I was very, very active in the Queen’s University Boat Club – so many dark and grizzly winter days were spent down on the Lagan. I carried on rowing even when I worked at the BBC and I eventually was a member of London Rowing Club.

“If we’re talking about the Northern Irish side of my life, the Queen’s time is probably the most interesting and the happiest.”

Tim returns to Northern Ireland regularly and remains in touch with a number of former classmates and lecturers.

“I am in contact with three of my Anthropology tutors. There is a group of four or five students in Anthropology who stay in touch and we had a reunion about ten years ago and dinner in Belfast. I am also in regular contact with another student who was in my English tutorial in first year and a couple of people who were medics at the RVH (Royal Victoria Hospital).

And he is clear about the role the University played in his future career.

“My time at Queen's opened up intellectual avenues that gave me a bigger perspective on the world," he said.

“It was totally unlike school – which I always hated – and I think it gave me a degree of confidence in my intellectual abilities that has stayed with me.”

General enquiries about this news story to Gerry Power, Communications Officer/Editor The Graduate, Queen’s Development and Alumni Relations Office; telephone: +44 (0)28 9097 5321. 

 

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