Our next speaker, Dan Richards Friday 17 February

Dan Richards was born in Wales in 1982 and grew up in Bristol and Bath.

His first book, Holloway, was co-authored with Robert Macfarlane & illustrated by Radiohead artist and collaborator Stanley Donwood. Self-published in 2012 as a limited run of 277 books, Holloway was issued in a general edition by Faber in 2013.
The book explored the sunken paths and 'hollow ways' of South Dorset's sandstone, chalk and flint, a landscape of shadows, spectres and great strangeness.

Moving in the spaces between social history, psychogeography and travel writing, Holloway has been described as a gem and a haunting work of art.

'A perfect miniature prose poem of a book, beautifully printed and published.' (William Dalrymple — Observer Books of the Year)

'Glorious ... endearingly open-hearted.' (Barnaby Rogerson — Sunday Telegraph Books of the Year)

Dan's second book, The Beechwood Airship Interviews, was about art and creative process and takes a journey into the methodologies and workplaces of some of Britain’s most unique artists, including Dame Judi Dench, Bill Drummond, Jenny Saville, David Nash, Manic Street Preachers, Vaughan Oliver, Jane Bown, and Stewart Lee. It was published by The Friday Project/HarperCollins in July 2015.

'A wonderful jigsaw puzzle of a book’ (Kirsty Gunn, Observer)

‘A kind of miraculous manual, a brilliant answer to the simplest and most mysterious question art inspires: how do they do that?’ (Horatio Clare)

‘Burnishing, edifying and relentlessly inspiring. A complex meditation on creativity as opposed to mere technique, full of wonderful, wildly grand statements from people who make excellent things.’ (Emma Jane Unsworth)

Climbing Days, his third book, was published by Faber in June 2016, and saw him set out on the trail of his great-great-aunt, Dorothy Pilley, a prominent and pioneering mountaineer of the early twentieth century. For years, Dorothy and her husband, I. A. Richards, had remained mysterious to Dan, but the chance discovery of Dorothy's 1935 memoir marked the beginning of a journey. Following in the pair's footholds, he travelled and climbed across Europe, using Dorothy's book as a guide. Having learnt the ropes in Wales and Scotland, he scrambled in the Lake District and topped summits in Spain and Switzerland, ending with an ascent of the severe serrate pinnacle of Ivor and Dorothy's climbing lives, the mighty Dent Blanche in the high Alps of Valais.

'Climbing Days is a special book, not quite like anything I have ever read before, and a law unto itself.
It's a wayward, funny, warm, wandering, open, inspiring journey back into the lives of two remarkable people, and out into the remarkable landscapes they explored. Climbing Days belongs in part to a rich comic tradition of mountain-writing which includes Bowman's 'The Ascent of Rum Doodle' and Eric Newby's 'A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush.'' (Robert Macfarlane)

‘A delightful portrait of an extraordinary woman. Dan Richards’ prose is a joy to read, and despite my lifelong aversion to heights, swept me happily along in the pioneering footsteps of the fascinating Dorothy Pilley’ (Nigel Slater)

'Climbing Days is the most enormous fun... Richards has something of Jerome K Jerome about him. It’s a miracle he lived to tell this tale and Climbing Days is a wonderful achievement. I will be intrigued to see where he takes us next.' (Katharine Norbury, Observer)

'[A] totally engaging and satisfying book on every level – as biography, memoir, travelogue and erudite meditation on the restlessness and indomitableness of the human spirit.' (Andy Childs, Caught By The River)

'[A]n affectionate portrait... For non-climbers, the attractions of mountaineering might seem inexplicable, but Richards conveys much of the thrill and sense of achievement. The resulting book is an entertaining and absorbing account of past and present relationships forged amid extreme physical endeavour.' (The Sunday Times)

'Sublime' (Alex Preston, Observer)

'[A] rich and illuminating portrait of a remarkable woman.' (The Scotsman)

'With its roots in the psychogeographical writing about landscape, this fascinating account of the life of the early twentieth-century pioneering mountaineer Dorothy Pilley eschews objectivity in favour of dramatizing the relationship between writer and subject, melding personal reflection and the process of historical investigation.' (TLS)

Climbing Days was shortlisted for the Wanderlust Adventure Travel Book of the Year at The Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards 2016.

Dan is currently at work on his fourth book, Outpost, an exploration

If the question at the heart of Climbing Days was 'why climb mountains?' Outpost will seek to answer the question of what draws people to wilderness? What can the spartan expedient architecture of such places tell us about the human condition? What compels us to go to the ends of the earth, and what future do such places have? 

He plans to visit the bothies in Rannoch Moor and the Cairngorms; the tjalda and sæluhús (Houses of Joy) in the Icelandic interior; Festival au désert in Mali, the fire lookout cabin in Washington State where Jack Kerouac wrote and kept his eyes peeled for forest fires in 1956; a shed on Ny-Ålesund in Oscar II Land, Spitsbergen, Svalbard where my father stayed during an Arctic expedition in 1982; the lighthouse of Cape Brett, New Zealand; desert habitations in New Mexico and the space-pods in Utah of the mooted Mars mission; brutalist tree-houses in Switzerland; finishing at Stromness, former whaling station on South Georgia and destination of Ernest Shackleton's extraordinary journey to raise help and rescue for the stranded crew of the Endurance in 1916.

Outpost will be published by Canongate in Spring 2019.