Philip Marsden


Philip Marsden is an English writer who has written in several different genres - travel writing, nature writing, history and fiction. His work has been translated into more than fifteen languages.
Born in Bristol, England, Marsden has a degree in anthropology and worked for some years for The Spectator magazine. He became a full-time writer in the late 1980s. He was elected as a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature in 1996.
A review of his work by Guy Mannes-Abbott appeared in The Independent newspaper in November 2007.
He lives in Cornwall with his wife, the writer Charlotte Hobson, and their children.

Awards and honours

Historical and travel writing

  • A Far Country: travels in Ethiopia, Century, 1990,
  • The Crossing Place: a journey among the Armenians, HarperCollins, 1993, . This book is being currently translated into Spanish thanks to an Artist Residency granted by the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada, and the Mexican National Fund for Culture and the Arts.
  • The Bronski House: a return to the Borderlands, HarperCollins, 1995, – "a story of multi-generational Polish exile involving Zofia Ilinska, friend, neighbour and poet"
  • The Spirit-Wrestlers: a Russian journey, HarperCollins, 1998
  • The Chains of Heaven: An Ethiopian Romance, HarperCollins, 2005,
  • The Barefoot Emperor: An Ethiopian Tragedy, HarperPress, 2007, .
  • The Levelling Sea: The Story of a Cornish Haven in the Age of Sail, HarperPress, 2011,
  • Rising Ground: A Search for the Spirit of Place, Granta, 2014,
  • The Summer Isles: A Voyage Of The Imagination, Granta, 2019,
  • Under a Metal Sky: A Journey through Minerals, Greed and Wonder, Granta 2025

    Novels

  • The Main Cages, Flamingo, 2002, - set in Cornwall during the mid-1930s.

    ''Spectator'' anthologies

  • Views from Abroad: the Spectator book of travel writing, edited by Philip Marsden-Smedley and Jeffrey Klinke, London: Grafton, 1988,
  • Articles of War: the Spectator book of World War II, edited by Fiona Glass and Philip Marsden-Smedley, London: Grafton, 1989,
  • Britain in the Eighties: the Spectator’s view of the Thatcher decade, edited by Philip Marsden-Smedley, Grafton, 1989,