John Mitchinson is a true man of mystery.
You may have been hanging out with him for years and don’t know it. Many of you out there have been watching TV, reading books, discovering stories that John Mitchinson has created, or published, or influenced, or written…without his name being on them.
Have you watched the hilarious, clever, cult BBC Show QI (which stands for Quite Interesting), presented by the redoubtable Steven Fry and now in its bazillionth season? Well, chances are John Mitchinson wrote every word that delighted you. He also conceived the show in a magical pub in a magical village in the most magical part of the English countryside – the part that Tolkein used as his inspiration for the Shire, CS Lewis for Narnia, and Lewis Carroll for the Wonderland and the world Through the Looking Glass.
If you’ve become engrossed in the QI books.. John wrote them.
If you’ve read any of the great foreign classics like the Master and Margerita (often touted as the best book ever written), or By Night Under the Stone Bride, or if you’ve ever discovered the great American writers Raymond Carver,or Richard Ford in a UK edition – John published them.
If you’ve ever been in London or Oxford or a dozen other English cities and bought a book at Waterstones..it was John who helped grow that company into the household name it is today. If you’ve encountered the cutting edge story telling platform of best sellers created through the crowdfunding site Unbound…well, that´s John.
The power of Story – that´s what John is about, and he´s made millions of lives richer for it. But his own story begins very humbly – in working class Sunderland, the ship building, coal mining, economically dying town in Britain’s Northumberland, where the love of a grandfather and the wandering of the locals hills and riverbanks, and the strange industrial margins of city and country, where legends old and new meet in a twilight zone of their own.
From there to being a lost boy adrift in New Zealand after his family emigrated, to being back in an England that he never quite fitted into, yet whose stories he felt in his bones…Join as on a fascinating adventure into self actualization through the power of Story, and meet one of the world´s gentlest, most brilliant, most charming, and funniest Minds. Once you meet John Mitchinson, your life is forever enriched.
Books mentioned:
So Long See You Tomorrow William Maxwell
Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
https://www.backlisted.fm/
https://unbound.com/
www.patreon.com/backlisted
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