Contact and Talks

Ken McKechnie is a geologist, turned gold miner, turned writer. He spent thirty years travelling the globe exploring for metals, gold and diamonds – from Canada’s frozen north to the deserts of the Middle East and Africa, to the jungles of Brazil and Southeast Asia.

He has written four novels based on his own adventures and years of historical research into West Country mining.

He is a fluent and articulate speaker. His talks are illustrated with images from both his own life and the 19th-century West Country mining history that underpins two of his novels:
“The Boy in the Dark” and its sequel, “Cousin Jack”.

Choose from one of three talks:
“From the Wilderness to the West Country”; A geologist’s journey from
fact to fiction.

“West Country Mining”; The reality behind the myth

“Bungle in the Jungle”; The inside story of the greatest gold fraud in history – Ken was there, and not just as a bystander. (The story is currently on BBC Radio and BBC Sounds as “The Six Billion Dollar Gold Scam”. Hear it firsthand hand from Ken.