Full Name James McDonald Role Writer Name James McDonald | Occupation Writer Nationality British | |
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James McDonald British is a mathematician and non-fiction writer. He was educated at University College, Oxford. He holds an MA from Oxford University and an MSc from Sussex University in the UK, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in London in 1990. He is a life member of the British Humanist Association.
He has travelled extensively in Central Asia and Southern Asia, researching Zoroastrianism and other religions. According to his publishers his book Beyond Belief took over 20 years of research, including an overland expedition from Europe to South and Central Asia, retracing journeys of Alexander the Great, Robert Byron and Eric Newby. This research took him to sites including Medjugorje in Herzegovina; traditional Bogomil sites in the Balkans, early Christian sites across Turkey, the Mountains of Ararat near the border with Iran, Zoroastrian Towers of Silence, Chak Chak and other Zoroastrian centres in Iran, Christian churches in Pakistan, Parsee temples in Mumbi, the Syrian Churches of Kerala, the Roza Bal shrine at Srinagar in Kashmir; Lumbini in the Rupandehi district of Nepal; early Buddhist sites along the Karakorum Highway, and historic religious sites of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
He writes extensively on a range of topics including Gnostic Dualism, the Cathars of the Languedoc, the Counts of Toulouse, Occitania, Medieval warfare and the Medieval Inquisition. His work is characterised by combining serious scholarship with an entertaining style. For several years he wrote a weekly column on English word origins for the Sunday Express, a national newspaper in the UK.
He is the châtelain of a late Medieval castle in the South of France, listed as a Monument Historique by the French Government.