Gavin Edmund Pretor-Pinney is a British author,[1] known for his books The Cloudspotter's Guide and The Wavewatcher's Companion.
Pretor-Pinney is son of Anthony Robert Edmund Pretor-Pinney and Laura Uppercu, daughter of George Winthrop Haight, of Manhattan, observer for the American Bar Association and a specialist in international law.
[2] The Pretor-Pinney family were landowners at Somerton, Somerset since the 1800s, descendants of the sugar merchant and Mayor of Bristol Charles Pinney; Anthony Pretor-Pinney had Somerton Erleigh, named for the family's former house on a different part of the estate, built in 1972–3.
[3][4] Pretor-Pinney attended Westminster School, the University of Oxford, and Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.
He co-founded the magazine The Idler and founded the Cloud Appreciation Society in 2004.