Tim Butcher | |
|---|---|
 Butcher and his Jack Russell "Betty", Israel, 2007 | |
| Born | 15 November 1967 England |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | Magdalen College, Oxford |
| Genre | Travel writing, Journalism |
| Website | |
| tim-butcher | |
Tim Butcher (born 15 November 1967) is an English author, broadcaster and journalist. He is the author of Blood River (2007), Chasing the Devil (2010) and The Trigger (2014), travel books blending contemporary adventure with history.
As a journalist between 1990 and 2009 Butcher worked for The Daily Telegraph newspaper, holding a series of positions including leader writer, war correspondent, Africa Bureau Chief, and Middle East Correspondent. He remains a regular contributor to the BBC radio programme From Our Own Correspondent and has written for numerous British, US and international publications.
As an author he published in 2007 his first book Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart , [1] an account of his 2004 journey through Democratic Republic of the Congo ("DR Congo") overland from Lake Tanganyika and down the Congo River, following the route of Henry Morton Stanley's 1874–77 trans-Africa expedition. The book, published by Chatto & Windus, reached Number 1 in the Sunday Times best-seller list [2] and also appeared on the New York Times best-seller list. [3]
Translated into six languages, Blood River was the only non-fiction title in the Richard & Judy Book Club 2008 and was shortlisted that year for a number of British writing awards including the Samuel Johnson Prize, [4] the Dolman Best Travel Book Award, and the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Best Book award. The book's Polish version, Rzeka Krwi (translated by Jakub Czernik and published in 2009 by Carta Blanca), was longlisted for the 2010 Ryszard Kapuściński Prize. [5]
In 2009, Butcher wrote a chapter for Because I am a Girl (January 2010), [6] a charitable compilation of stories focusing on the plight of young women and girls in the developing world. Published by Vintage, the book was the brainchild of Plan International, a leading children's rights aid group.
Butcher's second major work, Chasing the Devil: The Search for Africa’s Fighting Spirit (2010), [7] describes a 350-mile trek through Sierra Leone and Liberia following a trail blazed by Graham Greene and recounted in Greene's Journey Without Maps (1936). It was longlisted for the Orwell Prize for political writing. [8]
In 2010, he received an honorary Doctorate from the University of Northampton in the United Kingdom, for service as a journalist and author.
He also contributed a chapter to Ox Travels: Meetings with Remarkable Travel Writers (Ox Tales) (released in May 2011), [9] another compilation, this time on behalf of Oxfam, the international confederation working against poverty and injustice.
In 2012, Blood River became a text used in AS Level English Language and Literature Combined, alongside Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. [10]
In 2013, he was awarded the Mungo Park Medal by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, in recognition of achievements as an explorer and educator. [11]
His most recent book, The Trigger – Hunting the Assassin who Brought the World to War was published in May 2014 by Chatto & Windus. [12] It tells the story of Gavrilo Princip, the teenage assassin who triggered the First World War by assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, on 28 June 1914.
The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. The winner of the Booker Prize receives international publicity which usually leads to a sales boost. When the prize was first created, only novels written by Commonwealth, Irish, and South African citizens were eligible to receive the prize; in 2014 it was widened to any English-language novel—a change that proved controversial. A seven-person panel constituted by authors, librarians, literary agents, publishers, and booksellers is appointed by the Booker Prize Foundation.
Ryszard Kapuściński was a Polish journalist, photographer, poet and author. He received many awards and was considered a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Kapuściński's personal journals in book form attracted both controversy and admiration for blurring the conventions of reportage with the allegory and magical realism of literature. He was the Communist-era Polish Press Agency's only correspondent in Africa during decolonization, and also worked in South America and Asia. Between 1956 and 1981 he reported on 27 revolutions and coups, until he was fired because of his support for the pro-democracy Solidarity movement in his native country. He was celebrated by other practitioners of the genre. The acclaimed Italian reportage-writer Tiziano Terzani, Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, and Chilean writer Luis Sepúlveda accorded him the title "Maestro".
Dame Antonia Susan Duffy, known professionally by her former marriage name as A. S. Byatt, is an English novelist, poet and Booker Prize winner, and won the 2017 Park Kyong-ni Prize. In 2008, The Times named her on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.
The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, formerly the Samuel Johnson Prize, is an annual British book prize for the best non-fiction writing in the English language. It was founded in 1999 following the demise of the NCR Book Award. With its motto "All the best stories are true", the prize covers current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts. The competition is open to authors of any nationality whose work is published in the UK in English. The longlist, shortlist and winner is chosen by a panel of independent judges, which changes every year. Formerly named after English author and lexicographer Samuel Johnson, the award was renamed in 2015 after Baillie Gifford, an investment management firm and the primary sponsor. Since 2016, the annual dinner and awards ceremony has been sponsored by the Blavatnik Family Foundation.
Sir Michael de Courcy Fraser Holroyd is an English biographer.
William Dalrymple is a Delhi-based Scottish historian and art historian, as well as a curator, photographer, broadcaster and critic. He is also one of the co-founders and co-directors of the world's largest writers festival, the annual Jaipur Literature Festival.
Philip Blake Morrison FRSL is an English poet and author who has published in a wide range of fiction and non-fiction genres. His greatest success came with the publication of his memoirs And When Did You Last See Your Father? which won the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography. He has also written a study of the murder of James Bulger, As If. Since 2003, Morrison has been Professor of Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Colin Gerald Dryden Thubron, FRAS is a British travel writer and novelist. In 2008, The Times ranked him among the 50 greatest postwar British writers. He is a contributor to The New York Review of Books, The Times, The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Times. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Thubron was appointed a CBE in the 2007 New Year Honours. He is a Fellow and, between 2009 and 2017, was President of the Royal Society of Literature.
Timothy Harold Parks is a British novelist, translator, author and professor of literature.
Nigel Frederick Barley is a British anthropologist known for his books based on his anthropological field work, which have been treated as travel writing. His first book The Innocent Anthropologist (1983), was an account of field work in Cameroon and was positively reviewed.
Caitlin Davies is an English author, journalist and teacher. Her parents are Hunter Davies and Margaret Forster, both well-known writers. Hunter Davies wrote regularly about Caitlin and her brother Jake and sister Flora in a weekly Punch magazine column which ran in the 1970s, giving a broad insight into their upbringing. In her youth she was also frequently referred to by Auberon Waugh in his Private Eye diary.
The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (1990–2015) was a British literary award. It was inaugurated by British newspaper The Independent to honour contemporary fiction in translation in the United Kingdom. The award was first launched in 1990 and ran for five years before falling into abeyance. It was revived in 2001 with the financial support of Arts Council England. Beginning in 2011 the administration of the prize was taken over by BookTrust, but retaining the "Independent" in the name. In 2015, the award was disbanded in a "reconfiguration" in which it was merged with the Man Booker International Prize.
Jason Webster is an Anglo-American author who writes on Spain. He was born in California to British parents in 1970. He has spent most of his adult life in Spain, having settled in Valencia with his Spanish wife, actress and dancer Salud Botella. He is a director of The Scheherazade Foundation.
Horatio Clare is an author known for travel, memoir, nature and children's books. He worked at the BBC as a producer on Front Row, Night Waves and The Verb.
Sarah Maguire was a British poet, translator and broadcaster.
Francis Spufford FRSL is an English author and teacher of writing whose career has seen him shift gradually from non-fiction to fiction. His first novel Golden Hill received critical acclaim and numerous prizes including the Costa Book Award for a first novel, the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Ondaatje Prize. In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
NoViolet Bulawayo is the pen name of Elizabeth Zandile Tshele, a Zimbabwean author and Stegner Fellow at Stanford University (2012–14). In 2012, the National Book Foundation named her a "5 under 35" honoree. Bulawayo was cited as one of the Top 100 most influential Africans by New African magazine in 2014. Her debut novel We Need New Names was shortlisted for the 2013 Booker Prize, and in 2022 her second novel Glory was announced on the Booker longlist of 13 titles, making her "the first Black African woman to appear on the Booker list twice".
Billy Bob Buttons the pen name of Edward Hugh Trayer, is a British-born children, young adult and adult novelist. He is the author of sixteen books to date including: Felicity Brady and the Wizard's Bookshop, The Gullfoss LegendsTor Assassin Hunter, Tor Wolf Rising, Tiffany Sparrow and I Think I Murdered Miss. He is published by The Wishing Shelf Press.
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Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart is a 2007 book by British journalist and writer Tim Butcher.
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