Horatio Clare – författare

'Magnificent' Robert MacfarlaneWinner of the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the YearOur lives depend on shipping but it is a world which is largely hidden from us. In every lonely corner of every sea, through every night, every day, and every imaginable weather, tiny crews of seafarers work the giant ships which keep landed life afloat. These ordinary men live extraordinary lives, subject to dangers and difficulties we can only imagine, from hurricanes and pirates to years of confinement in hazardous, if not hellish, environments. Horatio Clare joins two container ships on their epic voyages across the globe and experiences unforgettable journeys. As the ships cross seas of history and incident, seafarers unfold the stories of their lives, and a beautiful and terrifying portrait of the oceans and their human subjects emerges.'Tremendous' The Times

From the slums of Cape Town to the palaces of Algiers, through Pygmy villages where pineapples grow wild, to the Gulf of Guinea where the sea blazes with oil flares, across two continents and fourteen countries - this epic journey is nothing to swallows, they do it twice a year. But for Horatio Clare, writer and birdwatcher, it is the expedition of a lifetime. Along the way he discovers old empires and modern tribes, a witch-doctor's recipe for stewed swallow, explains how to travel without money or a passport, and describes a terrifying incident involving three Spanish soldiers and a tiny orange dog. By trains, motorbikes, canoes, one camel and three ships, Clare follows the swallows from reed beds in South Africa, where millions roost in February, to a barn in Wales, where a pair nest in May.

The mental health system is in trouble. Most people who need help are receiving inadequate treatment, years behind the latest thinking. This life-changing book reveals what really works, and how it can help you.‘Completely brilliant. Everyone should read it’ Cathy Rentzenbrink‘Horatio is as wise as he is compassionate’ Chris van TullekenSpurred into researching this topic following his own journey from breakdown to recovery, award-winning writer and broadcaster Horatio Clare speaks to experts from across the system to show how to put together the best treatment plan for you or a loved one.Whether your interest is in anxiety, depression, burnout, insomnia, self-harm, psychosis, an eating disorder, or any one of many conditions of the mind which can be hell to endure, or support someone through, this vital and beautifully written book is for you.‘A selfless, hopeful book by a writer of vast heart and quiet brilliance, which over its course creates a cartography of the 'paths to recovery' that are open to us all’ Robert Macfarlane

Make the mental health system work for you. This life-changing book reveals what really works, and how it can help you.'Just found this in a library a day before going to meet a psychiatrist. I couldn't put it down last night. Lost a lot of sleep but gained a companion through a painfully dark time… Your book is the best I've ever read on the subject and I will recommend it far and wide' Reader'I am in awe of this book and want to give it to everyone I know- friends, family and health professionals alike' General Practitioner'If you are struggling with your mental health, or you are a friend, relative or colleague to someone who is, then this is a life-saver' Therapist'Deeply researched, inspiring, could be read profitably by anyone' Observer

Make the mental health system work for you. This life-changing book reveals what really works, and how it can help you.'Just found this in a library a day before going to meet a psychiatrist. I couldn't put it down last night. Lost a lot of sleep but gained a companion through a painfully dark time… Your book is the best I've ever read on the subject and I will recommend it far and wide' Reader'I am in awe of this book and want to give it to everyone I know- friends, family and health professionals alike' General Practitioner'If you are struggling with your mental health, or you are a friend, relative or colleague to someone who is, then this is a life-saver' Therapist'Deeply researched, inspiring, could be read profitably by anyone' Observer

When Jenny and Robert fall in love in the late 1960s they decide to build a new future together, away from the city. They escape to an isolated sheep farm nestled on a mountainside. It has no running water but it is beautiful and rugged. Their young sons can roam wild. As their flock struggles, money runs low and rain drives in horizontally across the fields, inside the ancient house their marriage begins to unravel. Wilful and romantic, Jenny refuses to abandon her farm. She will bring her boys up single-handedly on the mountain. Together they embark on a perilous adventure. Running for the Hills is astonishing family memoir - Horatio Clare vividly recreates his mother's extraordinary way of life and his own bewitching childhood in a magical story of love and struggle.

At thirteen Horatio Clare was a boarder at a boy's public school, a privileged member of an apparently blessed generation. A rebel - one of those who detested the system, who thought it not just fun but right to break its laws - he was expelled for smoking dope. He became one of the thousands who gleefully ignored the warnings and set out, in search of experience and intensity, to slalom on the slippery slope. He was a truant in its original sense: one who beggars himself through choice, not necessity. From university campuses to the rooftops of New York; from Brixton basements to fear and loathing in mid Devon, through psychosis, mania and depression, from sanity to madness and back again, this is a portrait drawn from a generation that turned to drugs. And it is a search for understanding: why do we do these things, and what do they do to us? What were we looking for and what did we find?

This exciting new series will bring together both classic texts and the writing of the leading Travel writers working today, which will inform and inspire the inquisitive traveller. It is an essential companion for anyone travelling to Sicily. Selected authors include: Herodotus, Patrick Brydone, Pirandello, Ann Radcliffe and D. H. Lawrence. This new series is not a guide of where to stay and what to do, rather it is collection of writing that aims to invest the traveller with a cultural and historical background to Syria, which will breath life and meaning into the sights, sounds and tastes that the inquisitive traveller will experience.

'Magnificent' Robert MacfarlaneWinner of the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the YearOur lives depend on shipping but it is a world which is largely hidden from us. In every lonely corner of every sea, through every night, every day, and every imaginable weather, tiny crews of seafarers work the giant ships which keep landed life afloat. These ordinary men live extraordinary lives, subject to dangers and difficulties we can only imagine, from hurricanes and pirates to years of confinement in hazardous, if not hellish, environments. Horatio Clare joins two container ships on their epic voyages across the globe and experiences unforgettable journeys. As the ships cross seas of history and incident, seafarers unfold the stories of their lives, and a beautiful and terrifying portrait of the oceans and their human subjects emerges.'Tremendous' The Times

From the slums of Cape Town to the palaces of Algiers, through Pygmy villages where pineapples grow wild, to the Gulf of Guinea where the sea blazes with oil flares, across two continents and fourteen countries - this epic journey is nothing to swallows, they do it twice a year. But for Horatio Clare, writer and birdwatcher, it is the expedition of a lifetime. Along the way he discovers old empires and modern tribes, a witch-doctor's recipe for stewed swallow, explains how to travel without money or a passport, and describes a terrifying incident involving three Spanish soldiers and a tiny orange dog. By trains, motorbikes, canoes, one camel and three ships, Clare follows the swallows from reed beds in South Africa, where millions roost in February, to a barn in Wales, where a pair nest in May.

Before Horatio Clare was born, his parents fell in love with a place -- a remote sheep farm in Wales, physically and in every other way far from the lives they were forging as young professionals in London. The farm was high up a mountain, nearly impassable in winter. The neighbors were surly, or perhaps just unused to foreigners. But the setting was breathtaking, and soon it changed Jenny''s and Robert''s lives. What began as the somewhat conventional dream of a young, ambitious couple from London looking for a weekend home quickly became a different vision. Horatio''s mother, romantic and tenacious, found it impossible to leave the fierce and beautiful land. She abandoned her job, her social world, and eventually her marriage to raise her two sons in the company of a herd of sheep, a few dogs, and the badgers, foxes, and mice who had prior claim to her new world. While other boys were going to films and listening to rock music, Horatio was weaning ewes and watching weather and surviving the furor of irascible neighbors. His childhood was marked by wonder and joy, and it is that wonderment that he bestows upon the reader as he recounts the story of the ancient, sometimes brutal, way of life on a hill farm. This wise book is a moving tribute to his mother, both beautiful and brave.

*A Newstatesman Book of the Year*‘Nimble, vital, unexpectedly affecting’ ObserverBestselling travel writer Horatio Clare joins an icebreaker for a voyage through the ice-packs of the far north.'We are celebrating a hundred years since independence this year: how would you like to travel on a government icebreaker?' A message from the Finnish embassy launches Horatio Clare on a voyage around an extraordinary country and an unearthly place, the frozen Bay of Bothnia, just short of the Arctic circle. Travelling with the crew of Icebreaker Otso, Horatio, whose last adventure saw him embedded on Maersk container vessels for the bestseller Down to the Sea in Ships, discovers stories of Finland, of her mariners and of ice.Aboard Otso Horatio gets to know the men who make up her crew, and explores Finland’s history and character. Surrounded by the extraordinary colours and conditions of a frozen sea, he also comes to understand something of the complexity and fragile beauty of ice, a near-miraculous substance which cools the planet, gives the stars their twinkle and which may hold all our futures in its crystals.

'Deeply moving, darkly funny and hugely powerful' Robert Macfarlane'A brave, lit-up account of going mad and getting better' Jeanette WintersonAfter a lifetime of ups and downs, Horatio Clare was committed to hospital under Section 2 of the Mental Health Act. From hypomania in the Alps, to a complete breakdown and a locked ward in Wakefield, this is a gripping account of how the mind loses touch with reality, how we fall apart and how we may heal. 'One of the most brilliant travel writers of our day takes us now to that most challenging country, severe mental illness; and does so with such wit, warmth and humanity' Reverend Richard Coles

'Deeply moving, darkly funny and hugely powerful' Robert Macfarlane'A brave, lit-up account of going mad and getting better' Jeanette WintersonAfter a lifetime of ups and downs, Horatio Clare was committed to hospital under Section 2 of the Mental Health Act. From hypomania in the Alps, to a complete breakdown and a locked ward in Wakefield, this is a gripping account of how the mind loses touch with reality, how we fall apart and how we may heal. 'One of the most brilliant travel writers of our day takes us now to that most challenging country, severe mental illness; and does so with such wit, warmth and humanity' Reverend Richard Coles

Shortlisted for the Wales Creative Nonfiction Book of the Year 2019Rediscover the light in the dark…‘A treasure of a book, wonderfully attentive in outlook and generous in spirit.’ – Amy LiptrotAs November stubs out the glow of autumn and the days tighten into shorter hours, winter’s occupation begins. Preparing for winter has its own rhythms, as old as our exchanges with the land. Of all the seasons, it draws us together. But winter can be tough.It is a time of introspection, of looking inwards. Seasonal sadness; winter blues; depression – such feelings are widespread in the darker months. But by looking outwards, by being in and observing nature, we can appreciate its rhythms. Mountains make sense in any weather. The voices of a wood always speak consolation. A brush of frost; subtle colours; days as bright as a magpie’s cackle. We can learn to see and celebrate winter in all its shadows and lights.In this moving and lyrical evocation of a British winter and the feelings it inspires, Horatio Clare raises a torch against the darkness, illuminating the blackest corners of the season, and delving into memory and myth to explore the powerful hold that winter has on us. By learning to see, we can find the magic, the light that burns bright at the heart of winter: spring will come again.__________‘The natural world has life and light on even the coldest darkest days of winter and that is Clare’s salvation.’ – Susan Hill, Daily Mail Christmas Books‘Magical, moving and deeply atmospheric’ – Patrick BarkhamA Guardian ‘best book of 2018’

*A Newstatesman Book of the Year*‘Nimble, vital, unexpectedly affecting’ ObserverBestselling travel writer Horatio Clare joins an icebreaker for a voyage through the ice-packs of the far north.'We are celebrating a hundred years since independence this year: how would you like to travel on a government icebreaker?' A message from the Finnish embassy launches Horatio Clare on a voyage around an extraordinary country and an unearthly place, the frozen Bay of Bothnia, just short of the Arctic circle. Travelling with the crew of Icebreaker Otso, Horatio, whose last adventure saw him embedded on Maersk container vessels for the bestseller Down to the Sea in Ships, discovers stories of Finland, of her mariners and of ice.Aboard Otso Horatio gets to know the men who make up her crew, and explores Finland’s history and character. Surrounded by the extraordinary colours and conditions of a frozen sea, he also comes to understand something of the complexity and fragile beauty of ice, a near-miraculous substance which cools the planet, gives the stars their twinkle and which may hold all our futures in its crystals.

Horatio Clare re-tells ten myths and legends of Wales’ famous Brecon Beacons. These brilliantly written short stories bring to life the extensive history and supernatural mystery that resides in these beautiful hills. Each story is illustrated by Jane Matthews.

When Jenny and Robert fall in love in the late 1960s they decide to build a new future together, away from the city. They escape to an isolated sheep farm nestled on a mountainside. It has no running water but it is beautiful and rugged. Their young sons can roam wild. As their flock struggles, money runs low and rain drives in horizontally across the fields, inside the ancient house their marriage begins to unravel. Wilful and romantic, Jenny refuses to abandon her farm. She will bring her boys up single-handedly on the mountain. Together they embark on a perilous adventure. Running for the Hills is astonishing family memoir – Horatio Clare vividly recreates his mother’s extraordinary way of life and his own bewitching childhood in a magical story of love and struggle.

The Slender-billed Curlew, Numenius tenuirostris, 'the slim beak of the new moon', is one of the world's rarest birds. It once bred in Siberia and wintered in the Mediterranean basin, passing through the wetlands and estuaries of Italy, Greece, the Balkans and Central Asia. Today the Slender-billed Curlew exists as a rumour, a ghost species surrounded by unconfirmed sightings and speculation. The only certainty is that it now stands on the brink of extinction. Birds are key environmental indicators. Their health or hardship has a message for us about the planet, and our future. What does the fate of the Slender-billed Curlew mean for us, and for the natural world? What happened to it, and why? In Orison for a Curlew Horatio Clare journeys through a fractured Europe in search of the Slender-billed Curlew, following the bird's migratory path on an odyssey that takes us into the lives of the men and women who have fought to save the landscapes to which the bird belongs. This is a story of beauty, triumph, and the struggles of conservation. It is a homage to a bird which may never be seen again.

Aubrey is a rambunctious boy who tries to run before he can walk and has crashed two cars before he is old enough to drive one. But when his father, Jim, falls under the horrendous spell of the Terrible Yoot, everything changes. With the help of the creatures of Rushing Wood Aubrey sets out to break the spell. Everyone says his task is impossible, but Aubrey will never give up, even if he must fight the unkillable spirit of despair – The Terrible Yoot – itself!Funny and fearless, Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot is a modern-day fable that mixes real family life with fantastical woodland creatures and a more than a touch of myth and mystery, to tackle the theme of depression head on, complemented by powerful line drawings by illustrator Jane Matthews.

The ladybirdz arrive in Woodside Terrace, and Aubrey's Easter holidays get complicated. Ariadne the spider asks Aubrey to help. Something Must Be Done, but first Aubrey sucks the swallow stone which makes him small enough for daring flights on the back of Hirundo the Swallow and amazing adventures in the Web of Time and Space. Add in Bernardo the bee, Eric the earthworm and a whole conference of ravens, and you have the start of an epic tale in which a small boy and a house spider try to save the world!

When the animals start rebelling, and Aubrey is stung by a very polite wasp, he realises there is something weird going on in the valley below Rushing Wood. And as he’s the only boy he knows of who can talk with animals, he is determined to find out what. With help from his friends Ariadne the house spider, Silvio the silverfish and Lupo the Huskey pup, the young warrior sets out to find the terrible Terrible Spiders and their genius creator Big B and, just maybe, save the world.

Shortlisted for the Nero Book Awards 2025We Came bySea is an untold story of thesmall boats crisis, a story which shows the best of us. It is the story of thevolunteers who help thousands of refugees in Calais, of the lifeboat crewsmounting one of the great search and rescue operations of all time, of anunrecognised, uncelebrated, all but unknown Britain which is giving its all tohelp the vulnerable and desperate. It is a journey through an unexaminednation, a nation which is as truly great and good as the people inthe dinghies believe Britain to be. It is not the story we have been told, andit is a true story.

Shortlisted for the Wales Creative Nonfiction Book of the Year 2019Rediscover the light in the dark…‘A treasure of a book, wonderfully attentive in outlook and generous in spirit.’ – Amy LiptrotAs November stubs out the glow of autumn and the days tighten into shorter hours, winter’s occupation begins. Preparing for winter has its own rhythms, as old as our exchanges with the land. Of all the seasons, it draws us together. But winter can be tough.It is a time of introspection, of looking inwards. Seasonal sadness; winter blues; depression – such feelings are widespread in the darker months. But by looking outwards, by being in and observing nature, we can appreciate its rhythms. Mountains make sense in any weather. The voices of a wood always speak consolation. A brush of frost; subtle colours; days as bright as a magpie’s cackle. We can learn to see and celebrate winter in all its shadows and lights.In this moving and lyrical evocation of a British winter and the feelings it inspires, Horatio Clare raises a torch against the darkness, illuminating the blackest corners of the season, and delving into memory and myth to explore the powerful hold that winter has on us. By learning to see, we can find the magic, the light that burns bright at the heart of winter: spring will come again.__________‘The natural world has life and light on even the coldest darkest days of winter and that is Clare’s salvation.’ – Susan Hill, Daily Mail Christmas Books‘Magical, moving and deeply atmospheric’ – Patrick BarkhamA Guardian ‘best book of 2018’

Latest in Seren's New Stories from the Mabinogion series.England is now a defeated archipelago, but somewhere in the higher ground to the far west, insurrection is brewing. Can Ludo and Levello, the self-styled kings of Wales, free the British Isles without the help of Pakistan, the only other country left in the free world? Award-winning author Horatio Clare refracts politics, faith and the contemporary world order through some of the earliest British myth to question our ideas about outsiders, infidels and the enemy within.Horatio Clare was born in London in 1973, and grew up in the Black Mountains of south Wales. Running for the Hills (2006) was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award and shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. He received a Somerset Maugham Award in 2009 for A Single Swallow (2010). He divides his time between south Wales, Lancashire and London.

The Slender-billed curlew is one of the world's rarest birds. A beautiful, fragile creature, it once bred in Siberia and wintered in the Mediterranean basin, passing through the wetlands and estuaries of Italy, Greece, the Balkans and central Asia twice a year. Then, for mysterious reasons, the population crashed. The Slender-billed curlew now exists as rumour, hope, unconfirmed sightings and speculation. The only certainty of its story is that it now stands at the brink of extinction. Birds are key environmental indicators - their health or hardship has a message for us about the planet, and our future. But we do not know what the fate of the Slender-billed curlew means for us, or what happened to it, or why.Orison for a Curlew is the story of a journey into that mystery. Following the bird's migratory path takes the award-winning writer Horatio Clare on an odyssey through a fractured Europe, to the edges of the land, and into the lives of the men and women who have fought to save and preserve the worlds to which the bird belonged.We travel with soldiers, beggars, students and green superheroes, including the father of ornithology in Greece, an extinction myth-buster in Romania, a Hungarian who invented the Danube delta biosphere reserve, and a birdwatcher who drew the preservation map of Bulgaria.This is a story of beauty, triumph,mystery and struggle, and a homage to a creature that may never be seen again.