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Douglas Botting is a British author, biographer, historian, explorer, and documentary film maker. Whilst still an undergraduate at Oxford, he led the first scientific expedition since the nineteenth century to the island of Socotra in the Arabian Sea, and his first book, Island of the Dragon's Blood (1958; reissued 2006) is an account of this journey. He has since accompanied scientific and filming expeditions to all the corners of the earth for Time-Life, BBC TV, the Royal Society, Royal Geographical Society, and Geographical Magazine. His many pioneering expeditions include the first balloon flight across Africa, the first journey from the Amazon to the Caribbean via inland waterways, and the first travels by a free Westerner in the Soviet Gulag since the Russian Revolution.
Douglas's first book was Humboldt and the Cosmos (1973), a biography of the German explorer, naturalist and founding father of modern geography - it is due to republished by Methuen in 2007. To date he has written twenty-five books, published in twenty countries around the world. These include biographies of the traveller, naturalist and author Gavin Maxwell, of animal conservationist and author Gerald Durrell, and of pioneering Zeppelin aviator, Hugo Eckener. He has also written several studies of Nazi Germany, most recently In the Ruins of the Reich (1985, reissued 2005). He has recently finished his first novel, and is now writing his illustrated travel autobiography, Lost Horizons, Forbidden Worlds.
Recent books:
Island of the Dragon's Blood (Steve Savage: 2006)
In the Ruins of the Reich (Methuen: 2005)
Hitler and Women, with Ian Sayer (Constable & Robinson: 2004)
Nazi Gold - The Story of the World's Greatest Robbery, with Ian Sayer (Mainstream: 2003)
Dr Eckener's Dream Machine - The Historic Saga of the Round-the-world Zeppelin (HarperCollins: 2002)
Gerald Durrell: the Authorised Biography (HarperCollins: 2000)
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