Ronald McGill
Author & Urbanist
The devastating diagnosis, AUTISM:
Three Royal Terrace.
Three Royal Terrace was written through the eyes of my autistic son. He has no spontaneous language, thus I was "giving him a voice"! It conveys not only his challenges but also, the frequent anguish for his three siblings and his parents.
The wider picture:
The Expatriate.
The Expatriate centres on me and my young family's experience in Malawi. However, the first part gives insights into life as a private in the British Army. That culminates in Aden when the British were being pushed out. For many, the army can be a salvation.
It moves to the fight to enter, and the subsequent experience of, higher education: studying town planning for five years at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.
The book includes a tribute to magical north-west Cumbria. I was in my late 20s. There, I managed to combine town planning and historic town centre renewal with new-build housing and conservation funding. It inspired my first technical journal paper. Ten years later, I would have stayed.
But wanderlust took hold! Eventually, London (with Taylor Woodrow) then internationally, in Malawi, Tanzania, New York (with the UN), Ethiopia, Kenya and finally Uganda.
The contemplative picture is from Addis Ababa in 2023, leading a GGGI study tour for four Ugandan secondary city mayors and their physical planners, to GGGI Ethiopia.
The professional side of The Expatriate is captured
in the book City Management in Developing Countries. This is the Urbanist dimension.
