Born in Edinburgh in 1930, the youngest of six, into a five-generation cartographic family, his interest in Nature started early; he spent many of his younger days on the Scottish hills, observing their wildlife. His National Service in 1948-49 was as a Gordon Highlander in The Gambia with the West African Frontier Force. At the University of Cambridge he read Geology and Geography, going on to graduate studies at the University of Chicago.

After seven years in educational publishing in London and New York, he joined the Houghton Mifflin Company in Boston, and was part of the editorial team that in 1962 published Rachel Carson's The Silent Spring, book and author deeply moving him; this book became the catalyst for many in the emerging environmental movement.

In 1971 he founded the Turnstone Press in London, his first book - Jonathan Livingston Seagull gave the imprint a great launch. Turnstone broke new ground; its vision was to reconcile science with a spiritual view of the world. The list contained many practical books on self-help, health and dowsing. In 1982 Thorsons Publishers bought the list. In 1979 Alick had started training as a Transpersonal psychotherapist, going on to practise privately; he was also for eight years part of the therapy team at the ground-breaking Bristol Cancer Help Centre.

In 1984 he started Gateway Books in Bath. This list partly continued the Turnstone vision, but introduced new scientific paradigms, such as a study of the crop circle phenomenon; and it launched Viktor Schauberger's research, with six commissioned books. In 1999 the list was taken over by Gill Macmillan.

Alick Bartholomew is the editor of Crop Circles - Harbingers of World Change (1991), and co-author with his wife, Mari, of Kombucha Tea for your Health and Healing (1994). The Schauberger Keys came out in 2002. In 2003 Floris Books published Hidden Nature - The Startling Insights of Viktor Schauberger. He is a member of The Scientific and Medical Network.