Thomson, Hugh 1960–

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Thomson, Hugh 1960–

PERSONAL:

Born 1960, in London, England. Education: University of Cambridge, Trinity College, 1998; Bristol University Film School.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Bristol, England. E-mail—hugh@thomson.clara.co.uk.

CAREER:

Writer, expedition leader, and documentary filmmaker and producer. Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival, cofounder. Films include Pacific Hell, Out of India, Great Journeys: Mexico, Dancing in the Street: A Rock and Roll History, Indian Journeys, and Highsmith: Her Secret Life.

MEMBER:

Royal Geographical Society (fellow).

AWARDS, HONORS:

British Academy of Film and Television Arts award nomination, and other awards, all for Dancing in the Street; Grierson Prize for best documentary, 2001, for Indian Journeys.

WRITINGS:

The White Rock: An Exploration of the Inca Heartland, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 2001, Overlook Press (New York, NY), 2003.

(Photographer and author of introduction) Hiram Bingham, Lost City of the Incas: The Story of Machu Picchu and Its Builders, Sterling Publishers (New York, NY), 2002.

Machu Picchu and the Camera, photographs by Hiram Bingham, Martin Chambi, and Charles Chadwyck-Healey, Penchant Press (Bassingbourn, England), 2002.

Nanda Devi: A Journey to the Last Sanctuary, Phoenix (London, England), 2005.

Cochineal Red: Travels through Ancient Peru, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 2006, published as A Sacred Landscape: The Search for Ancient Peru, Overlook Press (Woodstock, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Called an "impressive adventurer and an equally skilled writer" by Library Journal contributor Lee Arnold, Hugh Thomson is an author and filmmaker who has devoted much of his time to exploring the Peruvian Andes. As an outgrowth of his fascination with this mountainous region of South America, British-born Thomson went on several expeditions into the area surrounding the ancient city of Machu Picchu, and in the process discovered the sites of Llactapata and Cota Coca. He has written a book about the Amazon region titled The White Rock: An Exploration of the Inca Heartland, and has provided photographs for a reissue of American explorer Hiram Bingham's classic text Lost City of the Incas: The Story of Machu Picchu and Its Builders that was published in 2002. Describing budding-explorer Thomson as "young, British, and with no idea what he wanted to do with his life" until he discovered his life's calling, Christian Science Monitor reviewer Diana Muir praised the author for sharing his experiences "locat[ing] ruined cities by traversing road- less mountains in landslide country" and "pushing through tropical forests so lush that a hiker can pass within a few feet of a large stone building without seeing it." Reviewing The White Rock in Publishers Weekly, a reviewer praised the author's storytelling skills and added: "Erudite and charming,… Thomson's wit, eye for detail and reverence for humanity set him apart from the average travel-adventure writer."

The history of the Incan empire prior to its destruction by Spanish conquistadors in the 1500s is chronicled in The White Rock. The book features the history of the region, interwoven with memories of Thomson's first excursion into the area in 1982, along with stories of other men who set out to recover pieces of that ancient culture. He includes Machu Picchu discoverer Bingham as well as lesser-known explorers such as Robert Nichols and Gene Savoy, and also brings information gathered from archaeological and anthropological experts to paint a vivid picture of the Incan empire known as Tahuantinsuyo. Impressed by Thomson's "insightful glimpses into ways of organizing a great empire utterly unfamiliar to Western thought" and his "wryly self-deprecating humor," Muir noted in her Christian Science Monitor review that The White Rock's true gift comes with "the realization that a people as ancient and primitive as the Incas could so exactly share our sense of the beautiful."

Nanda Devi: A Journey to the Last Sanctuary refers to a mountain peak in India, near Tibet, and the valley on one slope that is hardly ever visited due to its inaccessibility and certain measures taken by the Indian government to limit who may travel there. Thomson was granted the rare privilege of climbing down to the valley in 2000, along with a small number of members of the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation. Part of the supposed purpose of their trip was for them to make suggestions to the authorities regarding whether or not the valley should be opened to more traffic, and how it might be accomplished. Although, as of this writing, the Indian government has yet to put any of the group's suggestions into practice, the experience of Thomson and the others has been recorded for posterity. In Nanda Devi, Thomson details his journey from start to finish, discussing the history of the area, previous expeditions, and both the geography and ecology of the mountain and the valley, providing readers with a vivid picture of the mountaineering culture that has so captured his own imagination. The book is illustrated with an assortment of glorious color photographs of the trek. In a review for Geographical, Sian Wherrett observed: "Thomson's engaging and descriptive style draws you in, imparting a burning desire to pull on a pair of hiking boots and join him for even the most terrifying of traverses."

Cochineal Red: Travels through Ancient Peru, which was released in the United States as A Sacred Landscape: The Search for Ancient Peru, is the result of more than two decades of traveling and mountain climbing across the nation of Peru. Thomson discovered that, after his numerous journeys within the country, he was beginning to see previously unrealized connections from one Peruvian ruin to the next, often in sites separated by great distances. The buildings at these different sites appeared to have been placed at specific angles based on astronomical positioning, and many of the works of art within the buildings bore some sort of resemblance to each other, if not in style, then in content, as both sexually explicit renderings and those depicting human sacrifice are featured prominently. Thomson's book offers his own personal findings and conjectures, as well as a strong overall grounding in the cultures of the region. Donna Seaman, writing for Booklist, commented that "Thomson creates an encompassing vision of the complex cosmologies of pre-Columbian Andean civilizations." Geographical reviewer Gary R. Ziegler remarked of Thomson: "He artfully blends technical archaeological knowledge with a readable and exciting account of his own Peruvian odyssey." A contributor for Kirkus Reviews found some of the background material excessive and less exciting that the accounts of Thomson's own experiences, dubbing the book "a diligent but disorienting work, best suited for readers with a healthy appetite for all things archeological and Andean."

Thomson has also produced a number of documentary films, among them the award-winning ten-hour public television documentary Dancing in the Street: A Rock and Roll History, which profiles the history of rock music beginning in the 1950s.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 15, 2002, George Cohen, review of The White Rock: An Exploration of the Inca Heartland, p. 566; June 1, 2007, Donna Seaman, review of A Sacred Landscape: The Search for Ancient Peru, p. 22.

Christian Science Monitor, January 2, 2003, Diana Muir, "A Palace at the Top of the World," review of The White Rock.

Geographical, October, 2001, "A Peruvian Passion," interview with the author, p. 98; January, 2002, Jim Blackburn, review of The White Rock, p. 70; June, 2004, Miranda Haines, interview with the author, p. 87; October, 2004, Sian Wherrett, review of Nanda Devi: A Journey to the Last Sanctuary, p. 79; Gary R. Ziegler, August, 2006, "Archaeology and Adventure in the Andes," p. 79.

Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2002, review of The White Rock, p. 1517; April 1, 2007, review of A Sacred Landscape.

Library Journal, December, 2002, Lee Arnold, review of The White Rock, p. 161.

National Geographic Adventure, February, 2003, Anthony Brandt, "Twenty Years on the Inca Trail: A British Bartender Discovered a Lost City in the Jungle and Became Obsessed with a Culture and Its Past," p. 34.

Publishers Weekly, November 25, 2002, review of The White Rock, p. 51.

Spectator, September 29, 2001, Justin Marozzi, review of The White Rock, p. 38.