John Harrison

John Harrison is an award-winning travel writer, historian and fiction writer with a special interest in the clash of the Old and New Worlds. His first book Where the Earth Ends (John Murray, 2000) was a Sunday Times book of the week, while Cloud Road (Parthian, 2010), which followed the fall of the Inca empire, won the Wales Book of the Year. Forgotten Footprints (Parthian, 2012) told the story of the jobbing sailors who opened up Antarctica, and won the nonfiction prize at the 2013 Wales Book of the Year awards. Following an overly pessimistic prognosis of fatal cancer, John followed the route of Hernán Cortés through Mexico for 1519: a journey to the end of time (Parthian).

For nearly twenty years he has worked on small adventure cruise ships as a guide and expert powerboat driver in over 75 polar expeditions, north and south. At home he is a regular lecturer on both writing and the places he visits, and is one of the longest serving critical readers for The Literary Consultancy, Britain’s premier editorial advice service.

He’s never happier than when he wakes up alone in a tent and remembers he is three days’ walk from the nearest road, 6,000 miles from home and no one knows he’s there. Home is central London and his partner Celia. John is now writing a book about walking west, back in space and time, from the modern city into the eras of Stonehenge, prehistoric Preseli and beyond.