I was born at Tannochside near Glasgow, in a country with a well-known respect for learning. My father, a coal miner (and a walking encyclopaedia, if ever there was one), used to tell me tales of ancient times, of the Trojan War and Ulysses. I was fascinated also by his stories of explorers and adventurers, especially that of Colonel Fawcett, who disappeared into the “Green Hell” of Matto Grosso in Brazil, whilst searching for the “Lost City.”
I remember looking at a magazine – I must have been about four at the time – and seeing a picture of men and women running in terror, whilst their city crumbled about them. Above, in the skies, was an enormous sphere, which looked like a giant moon that had come far too close to the earth. I was fascinated and strangely frightened by the picture, and never forgot it. Many years were to pass before I discovered what the illustration was of. It was my last year, 1980, (I think) as an undergraduate student at the Northern Ireland Polytechnic in Jordanstown, Belfast. Looking through the natural sciences section of the library I came across a book named Earth in Upheaval, by Immanuel Velikovsky. I had never heard of the author before, but the title seemed interesting. I took the book out, and never put it down until I had read it from cover to cover. At last, so much of what had always puzzled me was answered. Now I realized that the great catastrophes described in ancient legend had really happened. But why had I never heard of Velikovsky before? This puzzled me. It was only several years later that I discovered the story of Velikovsky’s suppression by the academic establishment.
I regard Velikovsky as a genius; perhaps one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century. He was also one of the most important; or should have been. His basic idea – that natural cataclysms have fundamentally shaped human and natural history – could have restored some sanity to a world driven mad by insane ideologies. If man could come to terms with the fact that he’s a small creature living on a small planet in a very unstable universe then he might, just might, forget his murderous utopian fantasies.
Fascinated by Velikovsky’ ideas, I began research, around 1982, into some aspects of the work he left unfinished at his death. By 1988 I had become acquainted with Gunnar Heinsohn’s research, which seemed to show that ancient history was even shorter than Velikovsky imagined; and by 1991 I had formulated the reconstruction of ancient history which now appears in the Ages in Alignment series.