TERRY MARSH
WRITER : PHOTOGRAPHER : HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHEr
ABOUT
I am a writer of guidebooks for walkers and travellers. The outdoors is my theatre, the setting for just about everything I write.
I am Lancashire born-and-bred, and have lived in the county all my life – in the bit they gave to Merseyside! – apart from two years in North Wales. According to my DNA, I am English, part Welsh, and a little bit-Viking. Amid the waning industrial landscapes of Lancashire, I spent thirty years in local government, which felt like a prison sentence for something I hadn’t done – well, maybe not the first fifteen years, which were pleasant enough. I rose to become a Deputy Town Clerk, which suited me perfectly.
I became a traveller later in life, when I started to feel the urge to write. Magazines were first, but then I found a vacant niche, and started producing books for London publishers about the mountains of Wales, the Lake District, the Pyrenees and the French Alps. My first book was The Summits of Snowdonia, in 1984, for Robert Hale, followed a year later by The Mountains of Wales for Hodder and Stoughton. More ‘outdoor’ books followed, but when Foot and Mouth Disease closed my outdoor office, I turned to travel journalism, specifically in France, with which I had become increasingly familiar. For several years I wrote for Living France magazine, learned to speak passable French – if you passed quickly – and fell in love with the country and several of its inhabitants!
In recent times I have been greatly inspired by the writing of Scottish nature writer, Jim Crumley, whose first book dealt with St Kilda, an island archipelago I, no doubt like many others, had longed to visit, something I first achieved in 2003. The bucking broncho sea crossing well worth the effort. Jim’s imaginative and precise writing have brought keener attention to my own work, improving my nature observation and teaching me, after so much racing around countries – five manic visits to Australia included – that there is much to be said for standing still and listening and waiting for Nature to come to you. And to understand what it is saying when it does.
The Collie-Mackenzie Memorial, Sligachan, Isle of Skye
In 2006, I gained an MA with Distinction in Lake District Studies from the University of Lancaster researching the history of the guides to Morecambe Bay Sands, and in November 2013 was awarded a PhD in Historical Geography for my thesis: 'Rooms with a View: The development of tourist accommodation in the Central Lake District, 1770-1914'.
Most recently I have completed a guide to Exploring Scotland's Islands, and followed that with Exploring Lake District Dales.
