Horatio Clare

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Horatio Clare is a Welsh author known for travel, memoir, nature and children's books, and his writing and broadcasting on mental health and psychiatry. He worked at the BBC as a producer on Front Row (BBC Radio 4), Night Waves (BBC Radio 3) and The Verb (BBC Radio 3). He is a senior lecturer in creative non-fiction at the University of Manchester.

Clare has written memoirs such as Running for the Hills and Truant: Notes from the Slippery Slope; a novella, The Prince's Pen; and several works of travel and nature writing: these include A Single Swallow (2009) and Down to the Sea in Ships (2014).

He wrote and edited Sicily: Through Writers' Eyes in 2006. In 2015 he published Orison for a Curlew, a combination of travel and nature writing, and in the winter of 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.

His 2019 work The Light in the Dark: A Winter Journal is an exploration of the highs and lows of the British winter. 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.

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.

In 2024 he published “Your Journey Your Way - how to make the mental health system work for you” with Penguin, a study of new treatments and approaches to mental health recovery.

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.

Clare describes the experiences of his childhood in his first book, the bestseller Running for the Hills. His second book, Truant: Notes from the Slippery Slope, was published in 2008. In 2009 Clare's third book, A Single Swallow: Following an Epic Journey from South Africa to South Wales", was published. In 2014 Chatto and Windus published Down to the Sea in Ships: Of Ageless Oceans and Modern Men, the best-selling story of two voyages on container vessels Clare joined.

In 2015 his first children's book, Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot, was published by Firefly, and an account of the disappearance of the slender-billed curlew, Orison for a Curlew was published by Little Toller Books. In 2017 Aubrey and the Terrible Ladybirds was published by Firefly. A collection of retellings of Welsh legends, "Myths and Legends of the Brecon Beacons", was published by Graffeg.

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 has appeared in The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Spectator, New Statesman, Financial Times, The Sunday Telegraph, The Daily Telegraph, The Observer and Vogue.

His 2021 book Heavy Light describes his breakdown, sectioning, psychiatric treatment, and recovery.

• 2007 Somerset Maugham Award winner for Running for the Hills^[1]
• 2007 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award shortlist for Running for the Hills^[2]
• 2010 Dolman Best Travel Book Award shortlisted for A Single Swallow^[3]
• 2015 Wales Book of the Year Shortlisted for Down to the Sea in Ships
• 2015 Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year winner for Down to the Sea in Ships^[4]
• 2016 Branford Boase Award Winner, Debut Children's Book of the Year, Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot.
• 2016 Carnegie Medal, Longlist, for Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot
• 2017 Carnegie Medal, Longlist for Aubrey and the Terrible Ladybirds
• 2018 Wales Book of the Year, Shortlisted for Icebreaker – A Voyage Far North
• 2018 Grand Prix des Lecteurs Le Journal de Mickey, Shortlisted for Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot

• —— (2003). Marrakech the Red City: The City through Writers' Eyes. Sickle Moon / Eland.
• —— (2005). Meetings with Remarkable Muslims. Eland.
• —— (2006). Sicily: Through Writers' Eyes. Eland.
• —— (2006). Running for the Hills. John Murray.
• —— (2007). Truant: Notes from a Slippery Slope. John Murray.
• —— (2009). A Single Swallow. Chatto and Windus (UK) and Nieuw Amsterdam (Netherlands).
• —— (2011). The Prince's Pen. Seren Books.
• —— (2014). Down to the Sea in Ships. Chatto and Windus.
• —— (2015). The Paratrooper's Princess. Accent Press / Quickreads.
• —— (2015). Orison for a Curlew. Little Toller Books.
• —— (2015). Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot. Firefly.
• —— (2017). Aubrey and the Terrible Ladybirds. Firefly.
• —— (2017). Myths and Legends of the Brecon Beacons. Graffeg.
• —— (2017). Icebreaker – A Voyage Far North. Chatto and Windus.
• —— (2018). Something of His Art: Walking to Lübeck with J. S. Bach. Little Toller.
• —— (2019). The Light in the Dark: A Winter Journal. Elliott & Thompson Limited.
• —— (2021). Heavy Light: A Journey Through Madness, Mania and Healing. Chatto & Windus.
• —— (2024). Your Journey Your Way: how to make the mental health system work for you. Penguin Life.

• Official website
• Horatio Clare's thoughtful memoir, Running for the Hills, is an account of his childhood on a Welsh sheep farm. Daniel Butler. The Guardian. Saturday 25 March 2006. Retrieved 8 July 2010.
• Running for the Hills by Horatio Clare. Alyson Rudd. The Times. 28 April 2007. Retrieved 8 July 2010.
• Bach Walks, BBC Radio 3, broadcast December 2017. Retrieved 1 November 2020.