Last week I related some of the background to my last non-fiction book, Off Road Rides in the Lake District. While I’m in the non-fiction arena, I thought I might do a whistle-stop tour of my life as writer and photographer through the medium of non-fiction books. There’s more about the background on my blog, but TL:DR, I always had the ambition to write. Fiction was my original aspiration, but I also had a fancy for writing for outdoor magazines. However, for various reasons, my professional career first took off as a photographer, and this absorbed most of my energy in those early years. (My first exhibition, a great launchpad, was in late 1990).
The first two books to bear my name, in 2000 and 2002, were as photographer, my images accompanying the words of Terry Marsh, a colleague from the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild. The OWPG connection had much to do with these and most of my books for years to come.
2002 was a busy year, marked by the first books where I wrote more than just captions. I produced two volumes of Car-free Cumbria, pocket-sized books of walks accessible by bus, train, or lake steamer. And soon after came Outdoor Photography, subtitled Better Pictures for Outdoor Enthusiasts, from Cicerone Press. This eventually went to a second edition, done in collaboration with my friend and colleague Chiz Dakin, as her areas of expertise allowed us to broaden the scope to include additional areas like water-based sports.
After those early steps, you don’t need a blow-by-blow listing of all 60+ books that carry my name, so here’s a breakdown by category (regular readers will know I’m somewhat averse to the word 'genre').
NB: all the foregoing and many of the following are now out of print, so won’t be found on the publishers’ websites, but used copies are generally available from online sources. I do have extra copies of some: details at the end.
Picture Books
Apart from the two aforementioned, I did a series of picture books around Lancashire and the Lakes for an outfit called Halsgrove. Alongside the photography, I contributed brief introductions and captions. I’ve worked with ten different publishers and this is the only one where things ended on a sour note. Some of the reasons I won’t discuss in public, but here’s one: a couple of years after Lancashire Moods, they repackaged a selection of the photos in a smaller format and called it Spirit of Lancashire. Fine, except that they didn’t tell me beforehand. Grr.
More recently, and more harmoniously, I did Lancashire in Photographs and Manchester and Salford in Photographs for Amberley Publishing.
Outdoor Guidebooks
Now into real writing…
Apart from Car-free Cumbria (see above) I’ve only written one pure walking guidebook, 50 Walks Lancashire and Cheshire for AA Publishing. I have, however, done a bunch of route-checking and revisions for guides in the same series, in areas including the Lake District, Snowdonia, Shropshire, and various parts of Yorkshire. Done properly, this is very nearly as time-consuming as originating the book in the first place, a fact fortunately recognised by the AA. In fact these books earned me more than any others, though after factoring in time, travel and accommodation, they weren’t necessarily the most profitable.
I also did chunks of Pub Walks and Cycle Rides: The Lake District and Cumbria for the AA and the idea of a 'hybrid' guide was in my mind when I pitched Hike and Bike Bowland to Grey Stone Books.
Also my idea, and with the same publisher, was Scrambles and Easy Climbs in the Lake District, which I did together with long-time friend and frequent climbing partner Judith Brown. This eventually went to a second edition, and was joined by Scrambles and Easy Climbs in Snowdonia, in partnership with OWPG colleagues Tom Hutton and Jerry Rawson. I had a proud moment on a visit to Plas y Brenin, the National Outdoor Centre, when I saw a stack of copies of this in the gear store, obviously well-used.
My first dedicated cycling guide was The Lancashire Cycleway, at the invitation of Cicerone Press. This also went to a second edition. My only other pure bike book (apart from a self-published ebook, Kiwi Legends) is the one I’ve already written about (see top).
Travel Guidebooks
My first gig as a travel writer came thanks to a contact from the OWPG, Mike Gerrard (of Greece Travel Secrets). He’d been approached by Thomas Cook Publishing to produce a guide to Finland, but was too busy. Knowing I’d done a few trips there, he suggested me, hence Traveller’s Finland, which eventually saw four editions, and also led to Pocket Helsinki and Traveller’s Baltic Cruising. Regarding this, I’d never been on a cruise ship in my life and still haven’t; the book was essentially a guide to the main ports visited in a Baltic cruise. I even gently subverted the cruise ethos by including suggestions for 'DIY cruising' using scheduled ferries. I could have gone on doing books like these but Thomas Cook Publishing folded in 2013 (it wouldn’t be the last time this happened to me).
Photography Guides
I’ve already mentioned the Cicerone Outdoor Photography. It’s partly as a result of this that I was invited to a discussion with Ammonite Press. This led to a whole series of Expanded Guides, including 25 to Nikon cameras plus one foray into Canon and one into Sony. These were the user-friendly alternative to the manufacturer’s manual, combining a comprehensive guide to camera functions with clear explanations and illustrative images (an average of 200 per book). Once I’d done one or two there was a lot of material that could be cut and pasted, but this had to be done meticulously to ensure that the right bits got pasted in the right places. I was also continually looking for ways to clarify the explanations of concepts like depth of field (and how to manage it). This was an excellent exercise in how to write as simply as possible about complicated things. These books were done on a tight schedule as they needed to be out ASAP after the camera was released. I might get a copy of the maker’s manual a few weeks in advance, which allowed some groundwork to be done, but would typically have at most six weeks with the camera itself. (And no, I didn’t get to keep any of them.)
I would have gone on doing these but the growing amount of free info online made them unviable. I still get occasional emails from people asking if I’ve done a Guide to the Nikon D4, D500, etc
Miscellaneous
Arthur Ransome’s Lake District: another Halsgrove book, but not just photos. When it went out of print I made sure the rights in the text reverted to me and published a revised book, with loads of new photos, as an ebook.
Walking the World's Natural Wonders. A proper coffee-table book, published by New Holland. My name’s on the cover but I only wrote about half of it, including the introduction. I also recruited the other writers (via the OWPG) and could conceivably have been credited as contributing editor; in addition I was a major contributing photographer.
Lancaster Through Time and Lancaster History Tour, both published by Amberley. You know the formula; a collection of old photos paired with contemporary shots of the same places. A fascinating delve into the history of my home town. I knew a lot already, but learned a lot more. A curious experience was finding someone’s treasure trove of images from the early 1970s—when I was actually at school in Lancaster—and realising how much my memories of the time had been overlaid with more recent ones. The History Tour repackaged much of the same material into a guided walk around the city.
And Finally…
Books, of course, are only part of the story; there are also at least 250 published articles, some of which (most notably this one) offered more room for personal observation and reflection than the books generally did.
Books available direct
Get in touch and I’ll do you a great deal.
The Lancashire Cycleway (First Edition)
Lancaster History Tour
Manchester and Salford in Photographs
Off Road Rides in the Lake District
Visions of Lancashire (self-published through Blurb)
Interesting thanks, and you'll be glad to know that over the years I've bought several books that bear your name.