Billett Mike

Mike Billett is the author of ‘Peat and Whisky - The Unbreakable Bond’. His first book, he started researching and writing it after stepping away from the academic work. He trained as a geologist and after a varied and at times unscripted path in academia, he became a peatland scientist of international repute. Working in the British Isles, Scandinavia, the High Arctic and Canada he studied and observed at close hand the changes that were taking place to these globally important carbon-rich ecosystems. After decades writing scientific papers, a book aimed at a new and varied readership presented a fresh challenge. Unconstrained by the journal editor and the demand to compress and conform, he quickly realised it needed a completely different form of narrative. Mike went back to university and took a course in ‘Writing Creative Non-Fiction’ based around the New Journalism movement that came out of America in the 1960’s and 70’s. It was exciting and liberating - he had never heard, let alone read, Wolfe, Didion or Truman before. His love of whisky has taken him on a journey, or more correctly an odyssey, to expected and unexpected places. Often on foot, he travels to abandoned bogs that once were at the heart of distillery peat production and takes the reader to places to ‘reimagine the past’. In doing so he explores the special relationship that exists between Scotland’s national drink and the nation’s most abundant and arguably most important soil, peat. He unpicks the science that underpins our understanding of peated whisky and more importantly the research into how peatlands function, and have the potential to lockup huge amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide. To this day the relationship between peat and whisky is celebrated across the world and smoky, peated whisky has become a symbol of Scotland. Outside the British Isles it is now being produced in Europe, the Americas, Asia and Australasia as the passion for smoky spirits grows. But we are at a time when more questions are being asked about the future of this special relationship than ever before. ‘Peat and Whisky – The Breakable Bond’ debuted at the Wigtown Book Festival and the Whisky Show London and was published by Saraband a few weeks later on 12th October 2023. The author was born and lives in Edinburgh.