Philip Marsden

Philip Marsden, also known as Philip Marsden-Smedley (born 11 May 1961),^[1] is an English travel writer and novelist.

He is a grandson of Sir James Granville le Neve King of Campsie, 3rd Baronet (1898 –1989), a nephew of Sir John Christopher King of Campsie, 4th Baronet, and therefore a first cousin of the current Baronet, Sir James Rupert King of Campsie, 5th Baronet.

Born in Bristol, England, Marsden has a degree in anthropology^[2] and worked for some years for The Spectator magazine.^[3] He became a full-time writer in the late 1980s. He was elected as a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature in 1996.^[4]

A review of his work by Guy Mannes-Abbott appeared in The Independent newspaper in November 2007.^[5]

He lives in Cornwall^[6] with his wife, the writer Charlotte Hobson,^[7] and their children.^[5]

Awards and honours

• 1994: Somerset Maugham Award for The Crossing Place^[8]
• 1996: Elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
• 1999: Thomas Cook Travel Book Award for The Spirit-Wrestlers^[9]
• 2013: Honorary Fellowship awarded by Falmouth University^[10]
• 2015: Rising Ground: A Search for the Spirit of Place shortlisted for Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year^{[citation needed]}

Selected publications

Historical and travel writing

• A Far Country: travels in Ethiopia, Century, 1990, ISBN 0-7126-2566-6
• The Crossing Place: a journey among the Armenians, HarperCollins, 1993, ISBN 0-00-215878-7 (Somerset Maugham Award in 1994). 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, ISBN 0-00-255630-8 – "a story of multi-generational Polish exile involving Zofia Ilinska, friend, neighbour and poet"^[5][11]
• The Spirit-Wrestlers: a Russian journey, HarperCollins, 1998 (Thomas Cook Travel Book Award 1999)
• The Chains of Heaven: An Ethiopian Romance, HarperCollins, 2005, ISBN 0-00-717347-4^[12]
• The Barefoot Emperor: An Ethiopian Tragedy, HarperPress, 2007, ISBN 0-00-717345-8 (A life of Tewodros II).^[13][14]
• The Levelling Sea: The Story of a Cornish Haven in the Age of Sail, HarperPress, 2011, ISBN 978-0-00-717453-9
• Rising Ground: A Search for the Spirit of Place, Granta, 2014, ISBN 978-1847086280
• The Summer Isles: A Voyage Of The Imagination, Granta, 2019, ISBN 978-1783782994

Novels

• The Main Cages, Flamingo, 2002, ISBN 0-00-713639-0 - set in Cornwall during the mid-1930s.^[15]

Spectator anthologies

• Views from Abroad: the Spectator book of travel writing, edited by Philip Marsden-Smedley and Jeffrey Klinke, London: Grafton, 1988, ISBN 0-586-08896-2
• Articles of War: the Spectator book of World War II, edited by Fiona Glass and Philip Marsden-Smedley, London: Grafton, 1989, ISBN 0-246-13394-5
• Britain in the Eighties: the Spectator’s view of the Thatcher decade, edited by Philip Marsden-Smedley, Grafton, 1989, ISBN 0-246-13395-3