Stephen Wiltshire is a 33-year-old autistic man with an extraordinary
talent. He is one of less than 100 people in the world who is recognised
as an autistic savant. Whereas some savants excel in mathematics or
music, Stephen is an accomplished artist, and is capable of producing
highly accurate drawings of buildings and cities after seeing them just
once. Although Stephen is today a quiet and confident young man, he
endured a difficult childhood as family and teachers struggled to cope
with his autism - a condition that was, at the time, very poorly
understood and rarely diagnosed.
Cityscapes and buildings quickly
became Stephen's artistic focus, possibly because they represent the
kind of stability, solidity and repetition that autistic people often
crave. In a short space of time, Stephen became internationally renowned
for his strikingly detailed and technically accurate drawings, and
since his teenage years he has travelled the world sketching famous
buildings and cities.
Now Stephen is about to face one of his
greatest challenges yet. He has five days to draw a four-metre-long
panorama of London based on a 15-minute helicopter ride above the
capital. Can he accurately reproduce the skyline of his home city solely
from memory?
Click here to watch the video on YouTube
English - Intermediate The purpose of this blog is to offer some extra material that intermediate students can use. It also contains some of the video-activities and podcasts that have been used in our lessons.
