Ian Crofton, whose latest book Upland : a Journey through Time and the Hills will be available at the talk, will discuss what it means to be alive in the high places of Britain – not just in the present, but also deep in the past. His talk, extensively illustrated with both archive material (historical prints, paintings and photos) and his own photographs, will celebrate the high places of Britain and what the hills mean to those who have lived and worked among them, and to those who walk and climb among them today. Drawing on a lifetime of walking and climbing across Britain, from the Downs of southern England to the wild peaks of Scotland’s far north, Ian has combined his own adventures with a keen curiosity about the history and nature of upland landscapes. He will describe some of the many people who once worked and wandered among them, from Neolithic axe-makers to mass trespassers, from shepherds, quarrymen and miners to botanists, geologists, poets and pioneering cragsmen and women.

Ian Crofton worked in publishing for 25 years before becoming a full time writer and freelance editor. His more recent books have explored the interplay of landscape, nature and history and include Walking the Border : a Journey between Scotland and England, rated by both The Guardian and Trail magazine as ‘excellent’. His Fringed with Mud and Pearls: An English Island Odyssey was described by the BBC’s Countryfile as ‘really engaging’, and by Coast magazine as ‘a fascinating study about what it means to exist on the fringes’; it was selected by The Telegraph as one of their top twenty travel books of 2021

Ian has also written a number of works of popular history, from Traitors and Turncoats and The Disappeared to A Curious History of Food and Drink. His Dictionary of Scottish Phrase and Fable was described by the Times Literary Supplement as ‘a lightly erudite and well-informed work of eclectic scholarship’. Ian is a regular contributor to the Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal, and in 2015 was awarded the club’s W.H. Murray Literary Prize