Horatio Clare | |
|---|---|
| Born | London, England |
| Occupation | Author |
| Nationality | Welsh |
| Genre | Memoir, Travel Writing, Children's Books, Fiction, Essays |
Horatio Clare is a Welsh author known for travel, memoir, nature and children's books, his travel and feature essays, and his writing and broadcasting on mental health and psychiatry. A former BBC producer on Front Row (BBC Radio 4), Night Waves (BBC Radio 3) and The Verb (BBC Radio 3), he presents the Sound Walks series on BBC Radio 3, and is the writer and co-presenter of the Radio 4 series 'Is Psychiatry Working?' He is a senior lecturer in creative non-fiction at the University of Manchester.
Clare's first bookRunning for the Hills (2006) is an acclaimed memoir, 'the equivalent of a collection of poems by Ted Hughes - or even Wordsworth' according to John Carey in the Sunday Times [1] It won the Somerset Maugham Award and saw Clare shortlisted for Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2007.
His second, Truant: Notes from the Slippery Slope, a contribution the debate about cannabis, led Carlo Gebler in the Irish Times to advise 'Get your stoner friend a copy. It might just save their life' [2]
It was followed several works of travel and nature writing. A Single Swallow (2009) traces the migration of barn swallows from South Africa to South Wales. 'An extraordinary and mesmerising odyssey,' according to Annabel Goldie in The Herald [3] , the book was shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year.
In 2012 and 2013 Clare travelled with Maersk Lines as a writer in residence on container ships. His acclaimed account of the ships, oceans and crews he encountered on voyages from Felixstowe to Los Angeles, and from Antwerp to Montreal, Down to the Sea in Ships (2014) was judged 'a lyrical, heartfelt and eye-opening chronicle' 'Both romantic and realistic, written from the heart but crafted with a seafarer’s passionate precision, reported The Independent [4] the book won the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year.
Two children's books, Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot and a sequel Aubrey and the Terrible Ladybirds appeared in 2015 and 2017. Both Aubrey books were longlisted for the Carnegie Medal. Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot won the Branford Boase Award for Best Debut Children's Book, the judges commenting 'Horatio Clare writes about nature as well as T.H.White [5]
In 2015 he won the Royal Geographical Society / Neville Shulman Challenge Award, to tell the story of the fate of the world's rarest bird. His account of the demise of the slender-billed curlew, Orison for a Curlew, is combination of travel and nature writing, concentrating on the conservationists who tried to save the bird. "Busy and vigorous humanity is the subject to which Clare is best suited; he has a sharp ear for it, and thanks to Clare's generosity toward his subjects, the wealth of backstory and anecdote in his Orison practically hums with it," commented the Times Literary Supplement [6]
In 2017 Chatto and Windus published Icebreaker – A Voyage Far North, the record of a journey around the Bothnian Bay with the Finnish government's Icebreaker Otso. A New Statesman Book of the Year, the Economist commented, 'Light fills his writing... Mr Clare is a great enjoyer -- of people, landscape, and above all of language.' [7] Icebreaker was shortlisted for The Wales Book of the Year Award 2017.
Clare's 2019 book The Light in the Dark: A Winter Journal is an exploration of the highs and lows of the British winter, acclaimed by critics for its emotional power. 'As travel writer, nature writer, memory retriever and, I would add, prose-poet of mesmerising lyricism, Horatio Clare is a celebrant and observer of what is lovely, less lovely and sometimes, thankfully, absurd in the world,' wrote Juliet Nicolson in The Spectator [8]
Heavy Light: A Journey Through Madness, Mania and Healing appeared in 2021, published by Chatto & Windus. The work describes Clare's own breakdown, sectioning, psychiatric treatment, and recovery. Critics judged it 'game changing' (Helen Brown, Daily Telegraph) [9] for its insights into the causes, course and treatment of breakdown. 'What a gift,' wrote Megan Andrew in the Sunday Times, 'having such an articulate agent, reporting back from the far edges of the mind. [10]
In 2024 Penguin Life published “Your Journey Your Way - the recovery guide to mental health”, a study of new treatments and approaches to mental health recovery. The Observer judged it 'a generous and deeply researched guide to navigating mental health care [11] . It is a Sunday Times Best Self-help Book of 2024 [12]
Born in London, Clare grew up on a hill farm in the Black Mountains of South Wales. He later attended Malvern College and the United World College of the Atlantic before reading English at the University of York. He taught at the International School of Verona, the University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores, and currently the University of Manchester.
A BBC radio producer, then presenter, his programmes and series include:
Presenter / Writer Is Psychiatry Working? –Series 2 (June 2024) 5 x 30’ programmes BBC Radio 4 Presenter / Writer Archive on Four : Night Train ( 2024) 1 x 57’ (27th April) Presenter / Writer Is Psychiatry Working? (June 2023) 8 x 30’ programmes BBC Radio 4 Presenter / Writer Faroe Islands Sound Walk (December 2022) BBC Radio 3 Presenter / Writer Writing the Road to War (2022) BBC Radio 4 (28th May) Presenter / Writer The Archive Hour : Jan Morris (2021) BBC Radio 4 (13th November) Presenter / Writer Four Peaks Sound Walk (2021) BBC Radio 3 (25 – 28th December) Presenter/ Writer Sunrise Sound Walk. (2020) BBC Radio 3. 25-26th December. Presenter / Writer Arctic Sound Walk. (2019) BBC Radio 3. 24-26th December Presenter / Writer Sound Walk: Winter Wanderer. (2018) BBC Radio 3. 24th December. Presenter / Writer Bach Walks. (2017) BBC Radio 3. 19th-24th December. Presenter / Writer Sound Walk to Hay-on-Wye. (2017) BBC Radio 3 29th May. Regular contributor: From Our Own Correspondent (2013 – present) BBC Radio 4
Clare is the author and editor of Sicily: Through Writers' Eyes, an anthology of writings about Sicily, and a contributor to the collections Red City: Marrakech Through Writers' Eyes and Meetings With Remarkable Muslims. His journalism appears in The Guardian , The Sunday Times , The Spectator , New Statesman , Financial Times , The Sunday Telegraph , The Daily Telegraph , The Observer and Vogue .
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