Horatio Clare was born in London but his formative years were spent on a sheep farm in the black mountains of South Wales, the subject matter of his award winning memoir ‘Running for the Hills.’
No stranger to Llantwit Major, Horatio spent two fruitful years studying at nearby UWC Atlantic College before heading off to read English at York University. He then joined the BBC as an arts radio producer. Horatio’s essays and features are published in The Financial Times, Travel + Leisure, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Spectator and Conde Nast Traveller, where he is a Contributing Editor. He is a regular contributor to ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ on BBC Radio Four and the World Service. The presenter of numerous radio documentaries, his Sound Walks are a fixture of Radio 3’s Christmas schedule.
Horatio’s first book, Running for the Hills (2006), is the best-selling account of his childhood in the Black Mountains of South Wales. Described by John Carey in The Sunday Times as ‘the prose equivalent of a collection by Ted Hughes, or even Wordsworth,’ it was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and won the Somerset Maugham Award.
Horatio’s first book for children, Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot (2015) won the Branford Boase Award for best debut children’s book. Along with its sequel Aubrey and the Terrible Ladybirds (2017) it was nominated for the Carnegie Medal
A proudly Welsh writer, Horatio lives with his family in West Yorkshire.