Wiltshire has attracted writers for centuries, and continues to do so. This list isn't exhaustive but here are some of the local authors whose new books we're proud to stock. We've also included a few writers who used to live close by and are of literary or historical note.
Although we're close to the Dorset border, only Wiltshire based authors are included in this list.
If you should appear here, let bookambassador@beatonstearooms.co.uk or Beatons Tisbury know!
Michaela Boldy
Michaela Boldy is an RN, certified aromatherapy
practitioner and infant massage instructor. Michaela
is the mother of four
children and currently lives in North Wiltshire. During thirteen years living
in California she taught aromatherapy and anatomy & physiology in
colleges working with midwives, Michaela introduced aromatherapy to the work of
doulas and midwives affiliated with Northern Californian hospitals. The results
of a trial demonstrated that aromatherapy is highly effective for promoting
relaxation and reducing anxiety during birth. ‘Essential Oils for Childbirth’ is Michaela’s persuasive book to inspire more women to
include aromatherapy in their childbirth – a great present from prospective
grandparents and mums to mums-to-be!
Christopher Hart
Christopher Hart was born into a vicarage family
in 1965, and educated in Cheltenham, Oxford and London. His latest novel is 'Lost Children', published by Prospero Books (our Book of the Month for November
2018). His previous titles
include The Harvest and Rescue Me, while his historical fiction, written under
the pen name of William Napier, includes Julia, the best-selling Attila trilogy
and the Last Crusaders trilogy.
Michaela Boldy is an RN, certified aromatherapy
practitioner and infant massage instructor. Michaela
Christopher has also published numerous short stories,
essays and reviews, and writes regularly for the Daily Mail and the Sunday
Times, where he is lead theatre critic. He is married and lives in Wiltshire.
When not writing he prefers to be out of doors, walking, cycling or just
ambling about.
Marion Molteno
Marion
Molteno is a prize-winning novelist whose writing draws inspiration from a life
lived across cultures. She grew up in South Africa at a time of political
conflict, has worked in multi-ethnic communities in Britain, and for Save the
Children internationally.
All
her novels have won or been short-listed for awards. The latest, Uncertain
Light, shortlisted for two international prizes, was described by The
Bookseller as ‘A terrifically absorbing, topical and quietly affecting novel.’ Her
novel ‘If you can walk, you can dance’
which won a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize is earmarked to be our Book of the
Month for January 2019.
Marion
has a home near Tisbury and has spoken at literary festivals and in libraries
across the country. She is a patron of the National Women’s Register and blogs
at www.marionmolteno.co.uk
Gail Garbutt
Gail was bought up with a series of different breeds of dogs in a freezing house in Gloucestershire. One way or another they always seemed to come first; after all, they had their beds in front of the Aga!
Once married, Gail bought her first terrier, Floosie, and has since owned Ditto, Rubble and now Sixty. She lives in Wiltshire with her husband and has two grown-up sons. 'Spot On' is one of our Christmas 2018 recommendations for anyone who is contemplating a dog 'not just for Christmas'.
Sarah EllisLocal resident Sarah is passionate about the behaviour and welfare of the domestic cat. Holding a degree in Zoology and Psychology, Post-Graduate Diploma in Companion Animal Behaviour Counselling and PhD in Feline Behaviour, she spent 8 years as a research scientist, investigating first hand, novel ways to improve cats’ lives. She now works for international animal welfare charity ‘International Cat Care’ educating the public and animal professionals to improve the lives of domestic cats globally. Sarah’s an experienced speaker, scientific writer and has had several TV appearances - perhaps her most well-known being as one of the crack team on BBC Horizon's 'The Secret Life of the Cat. 'The Trainable Cat' which she co-authored with anthrozoologist John Bradshaw, is her first published works for the general public.
Fay Weldon
Fay Weldon wrote the classic, The Life and Love of a She-Devil, a wickedly funny satirical novel about a downtrodden woman that avenged her ex-husband and mistress. Hailed as a great feminist writer, after her novel Praxis, published in 1978, Fay has, since then, gone far beyond genre to become one of Britain’s greatest living writers. She has also worked in theatre and television, adapting the screenplay for the BBC’s celebrated 1980 production of Pride and Prejudice. Her latest novel Kehua, published this year, about writers and ghosts, has received rave reviews. She is married to the poet Nick Fox and lives near Tisbury. |
| William Beckford '18th Century Renaissance Man' |
Lizzie Brodrick-Barker
Lizzie Brodrick-Barker published her first children’s
book about a Rhodesian Ridgeback dog and his adventures, Bwana the Brave, and
it was an instant success. She has since published the follow-up, Bwana the
Bwilliant. Lizzie is well-known in Tisbury, where she has had a solicitor’s
practice for some years. She is married to Nick Brodrick-Barker, poet and creator of the alphabetagram.
John Cleare
John Cleare is one of those amazing people who’s so
accomplished that it’s hard to see what he doesn’t do. He is an internationally
renowned photographer and filmmaker of mountains and wild places and has spent
much of his life climbing and documenting many of the world’s major mountain
ranges, from the Himalayas to the Rockies. One of his film credits was for The
Eiger Sanction, starring Clint Eastwood. He has been on important climbing
expeditions such as the 1971 International Everest Expedition and 1982 American
Muztagh Ski-mountaineering expedition. When John hasn’t been on top of the
world, he has been photographing Britain’s countryside and authored many books.
His latest is, The Pembrokeshire Coast Path. John lives with his wife, just
outside Tisbury.
James Holland
James Holland is a highly acclaimed writer and
historian who was brought up and now lives with his son and daughter near
Tisbury. He published his first book in 2003, Fortress Malta: An Island Under
Siege 1940-43, which went onto the Sunday Times top ten best seller list. Since
then he has published highly acclaimed novels, such as The Burning Blue about a
WW2 spitfire pilot, based around South-west Wiltshire. His latest work of
non-fiction, The Battle of Britain, which is getting fantastic reviews, gives
an account, for the first time, from both the British and German sides. James
has just presented the excellent documentary The Battle of Britain: The True Story
for BBC 1.
Tom Holland
Tom Holland is an author and historian. He has
published several novels and has been highly praised for his historical works.
His first, Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic, won the
Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History and his second, Persian Fire: The First World
Empire and the Battle for the West, won the Anglo-Hellenic League's Runciman
Award. His latest book Millennium: The End of the World and the Forge of
Christendom is out now to rave reviews. Tom is the brother of James Holland.
George Herbert
George Herbert (1593-1663) was known as one of the
group of Metaphysical Poets, along with John Donne and Andrew Marvell. It was a
name given to them by the great literary critic Samuel Johnson because of their
celebrated use of wit and unusual metaphors. This group of poets had a huge
influence on twentieth Century poets like T.S. Eliot and W. H. Auden. George
Herbert was an Anglican Priest and his parish was Bemerton, just outside
Salisbury.
William Golding
William Golding (1911-1993) was ranked number three on
the Times list of Great British Writers since 1935. He is, of course, best
known for Lord of the Flies, but he was author of many other novels and won the
Booker Prize for Rites of Passage in 1980. Three years later was awarded the
Nobel Prize for Literature. William taught English at Bishop Wordsworth Grammar
School, in Salisbury, and left in 1961, to the relief of some boys who remember
him as a somewhat irritable teacher who clearly wanted to get on with his
writing. In 1964 he wrote The Spire, about the near collapse of a giant spire,
assumed to be based on Salisbury Cathedral. Though William Golding and his
family moved to Cornwall in his latter years, he was buried in the churchyard
at Bower Chalke.
Terry Pratchett
Sir Terence David John Pratchett or Terry Pratchett,
as he was more usually known, broke most book selling records. He sold over 65 million books worldwide, in 37 languages. Terry wrote mainly in the
fantasy genre producing the much revered Discworld series. The first, The
Colour of Magic, was published in 1983. Terry also wrote for children and
his young adult’s novel Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents won the
prestigious Carnegie medal in 2001. Terry Pratchett was diagnosed
with a very rare form of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease and publicly
campaigned for the Alzheimer’s Research Trust. He lived north of Salisbury. We mourn his passing in March 2015.
Mario Reading
Mario Reading is interested in predictions of the
future by the most famous of the predictors - Nostradamus. He has embarked on a
series of novels that are so popular that they have been translated in
thirty-five countries so far. The first in the trilogy, The Nostradamus
Prophesies, was published in 2009 and is about a writer trying to find the
missing fifty-eight prophecies before they fall into evil hands. The second,
The Mayan Codex, published this year, is a race against time as the writer
tries to unlock the secrets of the prophecies before they come true. Mario has
also published five non-fiction titles about the Nostradamus prophecies. He
lives just outside Tisbury.
Nicholas Shakespeare
Nicholas Shakespeare is a British journalist and
writer. He has worked for the BBC, The Times and was literary editor of the
Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph. Nicholas’s father was a diplomat and he
spent much of his childhood in the far-east and South America, the subject of
two of his novels, The Vision of Elena Silves, which won the Somerset Maugham
Award award in 1989 and The Dancer Upstairs, in 1995. Nicholas was highly
acclaimed for his biography, about the enigmatic writer, Bruce Chatwin, in 1999
and The Snowleg was on the 2004 Booker long list. His latest novel,
Inheritence, was published this year. Nicholas Shakespeare now lives near
Tisbury.
Leslie Thomas
Leslie Thomas, who sadly died in May 2014, lived in
Salisbury. He was one of Britain’s best-loved novelists, since he published his
auto-biography about his life in a Barnado’s home, This Time Next Week, back in
1964. Since then he has published more than thirty novels. The Virgin Soldiers
was inspired by his experience of National Service in the British Army. It was
later made into a film. His latest novel Soldiers and Lovers was published in
2007 and more recently, Almost Heaven, Tales from a Cathedral, a non-fiction
book about Salisbury Cathedral from the 13th Century to the current day.
Guy Walters
Guy Walters was a journalist for The Times but left in
2002 to write fiction and non-fiction books. He has written seven to date, all
about the Second World War. His latest work of non-fiction, Hunting Evil,
published in 2009, is about how Nazi War criminals escaped after the war and
how they were brought to justice. During his research Guy succeeded in tracking
down Erna Wallisch, who at the time, ranked seven, on Simon Wiesenthal’s list
of war criminals who had never been caught. It was alleged she had been a camp
guard at Ravensbruck Women’s concentration camp near Berlin. She has since
died. Guy lives in Wiltshire with his wife, the writer Annabel Venning and
their two children.
Fay Weldon
Fay Weldon wrote the classic, The Life and Love of a
She-Devil, a wickedly funny satirical novel about a downtrodden woman that
avenged her ex-husband and mistress. Hailed as a great feminist writer, after
her novel Praxis, published in 1978, Fay has, since then, gone far beyond genre
to become one of Britain’s greatest living writers. She has also worked in
theatre and television, adapting the screenplay for the BBC’s celebrated 1980
production of Pride and Prejudice. Her latest novel Kehua, published this year,
about writers and ghosts, has received rave reviews. She is married to the poet
Nick Fox and lives near Tisbury.
John Wilcox
John Wilcox is the creator of the irrepressible Simon
Fonthill character, a young army lieutenant who first appeared in The Horns of
the Buffalo, set during the Zulu Campaign of 1879. The Simon Fonthill novels
continue through many other famous British Army campaigns, from Afghanistan to
his latest, in the series, The Shangani Patrol, set in Khartoum. John has also
written an auto-biography, Bombs & Betty Grable, which begins with his
life, growing up in Birmingham, during the Second World War. John Wilcox lives
in Salisbury. His latest book, Bayonets Along the Border was published in February 2014.