Susannah Clapp

Bruce Chatwin was a traveller, a teller of tales and a connoisseur of the extraordinary. When he died in 1989 he was 48 and had completed six books. In Patagonia made him celebrated, The Viceroy of Ouidah and On the Black Hill were both made into films, The Songlines made him a best-seller, and Utz confirmed an artist at the height of his powers. Clapp edited two of Chatwin's books and her memoir of her friend is a beautiful evocation of the man feted for his looks as well as his prose, a vivid presence and absence, whose travelling led him so often here to the Black Mountains.