‘Each new field is hope, each old one reality.’

NIGEL RICHARDSON’S LATEST BOOK, THE ACCIDENTAL DETECTORIST, IS OUT NOW

‘Richardson is a powerful and companionable storyteller.’

Lynne Truss, The Times

‘His prose sparkles.’

The Washington Post

‘Sharp and knowing and funny.’

The Sunday Times

Nigel Richardson

Feature writer | Travel writer | Author

Nigel Richardson’s new book, The Accidental Detectorist: Uncovering an underground obsession (Cassell), is a big-hearted dig into the hidden depths of metal detecting. During lockdown Nigel was looking for a travel story close to home and turned to a leading metal detectorist with an infectious passion for the hobby. Before he knew it the mysteries of the fields were leading him on, into a world that casts the history of these isles and its people in an intriguing new light. The Accidental Detectorist tells a story guaranteed to strike a chord with anyone interested in history, landscape and what it means to belong.

out now

Nigel Richardson is a British journalist and author who has worked at the top level for more than twenty-five years (thirteen of them on the staff of the Daily Telegraph in London). He writes about places, culture, history and wildlife conservation and has won numerous awards and commendations (UK Travel Journalist of the Year, Sunday Times Book of the Week, BBC Radio 4 Pick of the Week etc). He has also ghost-written commercially successful books for leading figures in the worlds of entertainment and politics.

From homicidal hippos to homicide cops

“Hilton fumbled to light a cigarette – his lighter had got wet – then, in a state of shock, did a strange thing: he handed out his business card. By a grim irony, the hippo had chosen to nearly kill the Public Relations Manager of one of southern Africa’s foremost safari and conservation companies.”

— ‘Hippo attack!’, the Daily Telegraph

“On the promenade above the beach I overheard a conversation that was very English, very melancholy – very Lowry, somehow. Daughter to elderly mother: ‘You just drift apart.’ Mother in reply: ‘Ooo, I know’. ”

— ‘LS Lowry in the North East’ (Travel Article of the Year), the Daily Telegraph

“…the detectives are drawn to the Nutshells room where they shrink to Alice-size and inspect their respective criminal wonderlands with the flashlights on their smartphones. … ‘I’ve been working with dead bodies for ten years,’ says a cop from Vermont. ‘The level of detail here is amazing.’ ”

— 'The miniature crime scenes used to train US detectives', Telegraph Magazine