Hilary Bradt Author & Editor

Hilary Bradt co-founded Bradt Travel Guides in 1974, but now lives in semi-retirement in Seaton, East Devon. After 40 years of writing guidebooks to Africa and South America, she has embraced her chosen home to the extent of insisting that such a large, varied and beautiful county deserved three Slow guides, not just one. A keen walker, she has covered many miles of the South West Coast Path and inland footpaths, as well as enjoying Dartmoor on someone else's legs - those of a horse. Most Saturdays see her taking part in one of Devon's Parkruns (5k, but she's appropriately slow) and during the summer a swim in the sea, just a few minutes away, is always a pleasure. She is a productive member of the South West Sculptors' Association and lectures regularly on travel-related topics at libraries and literary festivals, both in Devon and further afield. Janice Booth considers Devon her 'home county' and settled here in 2001, after many decades in various other parts of Britain. As a wartime toddler she lived briefly in Colyton (East Devon), where her mother took her 'to the seaside' at Seaton via a branch of the old Southern Railway that ran where the Seaton Tramway now rattles to and fro. On family holidays she tasted her first clotted cream in Sidmouth aged eight, rode on the Burgh Island tractor aged ten, and rock-hopped along the shore near Wembury in her early teens. She's fascinated by Devon folklore, has co-written (with Hilary) Bradt's Slow Guide to East Devon & the Jurassic Coast, and - further afield - is co-author of the Bradt's Rwanda. She lives within sound of the sea in Seaton, where she runs two poetry-reading groups and enjoys exploring the area on local buses.