About this item
'A seven-year old girl on a seventy-foot yacht, for ten years, over fifty thousand miles of sailing . . . a fantastic story of a truly Odyssean journey across all the world's great oceans - but is also the inspiring story of the developing of a restless and inquiring mind' SIMON WINCHESTER, #1 Sunday Times bestselling author'A jaw-dropping and thrilling real-life adventure on the high seas' SARAH BROWN'This is a story of an epic childhood journey, so exciting and so shocking it is hard to know whether you're reading about a dream or a nightmare ... Wavewalker is thrilling, horrifying, beautifully written - I couldn't put it down' ED BALLSAged just seven, Suzanne Heywood set sail with her parents and brother on a three-year voyage around the world. What followed turned instead into a decade-long way of life, through storms, shipwrecks, reefs and isolation, with little formal schooling.
About the Author
I grew up sailing around the world on a boat. My father set sail from England in 1976 on the Schooner Wavewalker with my brother, mother and me on board for what was supposed to be a three-year voyage but turned out to be a decade-long trip. While this meant that I saw a huge amount of our planet (though generally only the parts that are near sea level) , it also meant that I was isolated as a child and struggled to get any formal education. Somehow, I managed to teach myself by correspondence and won a place to study at university. My book "Wavewalker" tells this story. It is both an adventure story and a coming-of-age story in a world that appeared idyllic but in reality was hugely challenging. After gaining my degree and PhD I worked for a few years in the UK Treasury and for 17 years at McKinsey and Company, where I specialised in organisation design and strategy. My book, "ReOrg", co-authored with Stephen Heidari-Robinson captured the learnings from this for others to use when redesigning organisations. In the Treasury I was lucky enough to meet my future husband, Jeremy Heywood, who went on to serve four UK Prime Ministers in various roles including Principal Private Secretary, Permanent Secretary of 10 Downing Street, Cabinet Secretary and the Head of the Civil Service. When he became ill in 2017, he agreed that I could write his biography, "What Does Jeremy Think", which records his extraordinary career. Alongside this I also wrote and published a short biography of his mother, Dr Brenda Swinbank, who was one of the UK's first female Roman archaeologists ("Recollections of a Female Archaeologist: A life of Brenda Swinbank") .
