Books about mental health against a colourful background.

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Reading lists

Books that can help improve your mental health

A Voyage Far North

Icebreaker

Bestselling travel writer Horatio Clare joins an icebreaker for a voyage through the ice-packs of the far north

Icebreaker sails with a phlegmatic Finnish crew into threatening and threatened polar waters... Clare’s witty prose, filled with vivid descriptions, bears witness to the melting skin of our fragile planet and all that its loss might mean for our souls

Clare has a gift for pinning to the page all that comes his way. His is a joy in framing with such precision and flair that it is the opposite of indulgent, allowing the reader to share in his own marvellous encounters... nimble, vital, unexpectedly affecting

Icebreaker has many of the pleasures of classic travel writing: a pure sense of visiting another world in the company of an eloquent guide. But this is not a backward-looking book, and its warning for the future is clear… The Met Office estimates the Arctic could be seasonally ice-free by the 2040s. It may not be many decades, then, until Clare’s travelogue is a record of a vanished world

Light fills his writing... Mr Clare is a great enjoyer -- of people, landscape, and above all of language

Salted with excellent topographical language... Clare has an ear and an eye for words... one can't have enough of the big white

A voyage into the Arctic on an icebreaking ship with one of Britain's best writers of nature and place. You feel the cold leaping off the pages

Clare's prose is so brilliantly evocative and so rich with awe, this book could sit as comfortably next to Grimm's fairytales as it does in the travel section... With an elegiac Keatsian sensibility, he depicts "the making and melting of ice" so seductively that reaching the end of this wonderful book feels like stumbling out of a Finnish sauna into a cold shower

Offers some telling and often amusing insights into the Finnish way of life while at the same time explaining how the work of an icebreaker crew fits into the increasingly complex geopolitical picture in the far north… he writes with perceptiveness and precision about the ways in which global warming are already starting to change the geography of the region... powerfully evocative

A hilarious, off-beat travelogue in the tradition of Eric Newby and Redmond O’Hanlon.  Warm and witty, Clare catches an important moment in the unfolding of climate change, and shows why we should all pay attention to what's happening in the ice

Captivating… Clare himself is a charming companion for the reader. His narrative encompasses both the past and a highly charged now – Finnish history interwoven with instantaneous thrills as the ship grinds and slides through a world that most of us will never experience... a delightful mix of mariner-rime reportage, local colour and Finnish history

Takes us to Finland to consider the fragility of our world; Clare's wryly philosophical and wonderfully humorous travelogue crackles and coruscates. From overheated summer to ice-bound waters, both books peer at potential disaster with brilliant wit and exquisite observation

A highly original reflection on military rivalries – and on the beauty of compacted sea ice and diamond northern skies.

Horatio Clare is the bestselling author of numerous books including the memoirs Running for the Hills and Truant and the travel books A Single Swallow, Down to the Sea in Ships, Orison for a Curlew, Icebreaker and The Light in the Dark. His books for children include Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot and Aubrey and the Terrible Ladybirds. Horatio's essays and reviews appear on BBC radio and in the Financial Times, the Observer and the Spectator, among other publications. He lives with his family in West Yorkshire.

*A Newstatesman Book of the Year* 
 
‘Nimble, vital, unexpectedly affecting’ Observer 
 
Bestselling travel writer Horatio Clare joins an icebreaker for a voyage through the ice-packs of the far north. 
 
'We are celebrating a hundred years since independence this year: how would you like to travel on a government icebreaker?' 
 
 
A message from the Finnish embassy launches Horatio Clare on a voyage around an extraordinary country and an unearthly place, the frozen Bay of Bothnia, just short of the Arctic circle. Travelling with the crew of Icebreaker Otso, Horatio, whose last adventure saw him embedded on Maersk container vessels for the bestseller Down to the Sea in Ships, discovers stories of Finland, of her mariners and of ice. 
 
 
Aboard Otso Horatio gets to know the men who make up her crew, and explores Finland’s history and character. Surrounded by the extraordinary colours and conditions of a frozen sea, he also comes to understand something of the complexity and fragile beauty of ice, a near-miraculous substance which cools the planet, gives the stars their twinkle and which may hold all our futures in its crystals.

Of Ageless Oceans and Modern Men

Down To The Sea In Ships

Acclaimed nature writer Horatio Clare travels the great oceans on cargo ships, and witnesses the collision of two temperaments: man and the sea

Wonderful… Clare’s account of his journeys with the officers and crews of container ships is gripping and stomach-churning in equal measure

[A] beautifully written account of seafaring life

A lyrical, heartfelt but eye-opening chronicle... Both romantic and realistic, written from the heart but crafted with a seafarer’s “passionate precision”, [Clare’s] book will steer you into the new year on a course that may deepen your grasp both of that world, and of ourselves

If you can't run away to sea (though I recommend you do), Clare's book is a warm and captivating companion to it

Stupendous and extraordinarily exciting... What Clare demonstrates, even beyond his undoubted gifts as writer, is his basic humanity. I read his wonderful book with gratitude for his insight – but also with increased admiration for the men to whom we owe almost everything in our comfortable and secure lives

Rich and dense, full of old sea-dog stories, with barely a word wasted, it’s a triumph of quiet artistry

This is a warm and lyrical book about a tough trade in tough times

Wonderful... Clare’s writing is fluid, light and eminently readable, but perhaps his greatest asset is his empathy

Clare’s powers of plain description are tremendous

A fabulous account... There is Conradian insight in Clare’s portrayal of the crews to which he is supernumerary, from the captain who hums as he negotiates narrow channels to the first mate constantly crunching carrots

There remains something majestic and timeless about the sailor’s life, captured here in moments of pure poetry

Remarkable... Clare has the two essential qualities of a good travel writer: a sharp observing eye and a generous spirit

An epic and lyrical adventure in which Clare naturally recalls Melville, Conrad, Masefield and Coleridge to evoke a way of life that is so entwined with, yet alien to, our own

Clare's reportage is exemplary... He offers a fascinating insight into the often uncomfortable realities of an industry that relies on the cheap labour of Filipinos

Encounters with crew members are interspersed with allusions to seafarers literary and historical. Clare's prose is at its most lyrical, however, describing the endlessly changing seascapes all around him

A true account of a remarkable journey by the extremely talented Welsh writer

[Clare] is a wonderfully energetic travel writer, as buoyant as a cork in a high sea

As wonderful as it can be terrifying, this glimpse into a seldom seen world cannot be missed!

Acutely observed and surprisingly moving... Clare’s writing everywhere is of the highest order, assured, probing and alert. But it is his ability to convey the strange effect on the human spirit of being at sea that raises the book above the ordinary

A smooth, compelling narrative. Above all, [Clare is] good company: sharp-eyed, empathetic, amused and endearing

A fascinating study of big businesses afloat, this is a moving tribute to those who live and work on the great waters far from land

Somehow, Clare manages to describe these clunking behemoths of the ocean in exquisite, often poetic language… Unexpectedly riveting

With an obsessive attention to detail, Clare captures the tales, trials and musings of mariners that would otherwise be lost to the tides

Reading the account of [Clare’s] travels I am transported back to the bridge, and the sea, and the salt spray of the ocean

A fascinating study into the realities of big business afloat and of humanity in extreme conditions

This is far more than a travelogue. Packed with acute observations and sprinkled with historical seafaring tales, it’s a wonderful, insightful read

[Clare] brilliantly evokes a way of life that is unfamiliar to most people, but essential to all our daily lives

'Magnificent' Robert Macfarlane 
 
Winner of the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year 
 
Our lives depend on shipping but it is a world which is largely hidden from us. In every lonely corner of every sea, through every night, every day, and every imaginable weather, tiny crews of seafarers work the giant ships which keep landed life afloat. These ordinary men live extraordinary lives, subject to dangers and difficulties we can only imagine, from hurricanes and pirates to years of confinement in hazardous, if not hellish, environments. Horatio Clare joins two container ships on their epic voyages across the globe and experiences unforgettable journeys. As the ships cross seas of history and incident, seafarers unfold the stories of their lives, and a beautiful and terrifying portrait of the oceans and their human subjects emerges. 
 
'Tremendous' The Times

Following An Epic Journey From South Africa To South Wales

A Single Swallow

A magical, thrilling journey and a hugely seductive book which combines the best travel and nature writing.

Clare's extraordinary and mesmerising odyssey following the migration of the swallow from South Africa to South Wales

The author deploys some fine lyrical writing and a gift for inventive, unexpected metaphor ... Clare's other great asset is his brave, modern, multicultural and open-hearted approach to travel itself

Fizzingly entertaining. His own prose has something of their flight: daring, sharp-edged, fast-moving, graceful, full of surprises. This is a great adventure, thrillingly realised

Remarkably insightful and entertaining, with Clare proving himself to be the most enthusiastic, open-minded, intelligent and incorrigibly romantic of travellers

Clare has produced an enthusiastic, often elegiac, chronicle of his encounters with the swallows

His eye for detail and his elegant pen give flavour of each country he crosses: great veldt and high plateaux, Congo's "green vastness", the "sandy seas" of the Sahel and, finally, the fertile plain of the north African coast

The resulting book, travel writing at its very best, is enthralling, passionate, hair-raising, quirky, hilarious, informative, occasionally mad and utterly, utterly brilliant... irresistible stuff.

Horatio Clare pays tribute to the extraordinary migratory journeys of the swallow...a book that combines travel with natural history

It's graphically done, making me feel I was with him all the way

Clare is engaging and makes a convincing case for the futility of borders

His descriptive prose is faultlessly evocative

From the slums of Cape Town to the palaces of Algiers, through Pygmy villages where pineapples grow wild, to the Gulf of Guinea where the sea blazes with oil flares, across two continents and fourteen countries - this epic journey is nothing to swallows, they do it twice a year. But for Horatio Clare, writer and birdwatcher, it is the expedition of a lifetime. 
 
Along the way he discovers old empires and modern tribes, a witch-doctor's recipe for stewed swallow, explains how to travel without money or a passport, and describes a terrifying incident involving three Spanish soldiers and a tiny orange dog. By trains, motorbikes, canoes, one camel and three ships, Clare follows the swallows from reed beds in South Africa, where millions roost in February, to a barn in Wales, where a pair nest in May.

Horatio Clare

A beautiful, unflinchingly honest book about madness, mania, parenting, surviving and, above all, love and its power to heal us

Rachel Clarke, author of Dear Life and Breathtaking

A brave, lit-up account of going mad and getting better, that forensically tracks the footprints of both journeys towards a settlement with the self

Readers of Clare's game-changing memoir . . . will be struck by the fact that a mind so recently dominated by straight-to-DVD fantasies is now capable of reflecting on them with so much gentle wisdom and acute self-awareness. And in such beautiful, witty prose

Hard-hitting but tender-hearted . . . Clare thoughtfully and determinedly seeks to challenge the status-quo on treatment for mental health conditions

What a gift...having such an articulate agent, reporting back from the far edges of the mind

I loved Heavy Light: its honesty, its questing intelligence...his description of our threadbare mental health services, and the inhuman pressures on those who work in them, is heart-breaking. We have to do better

Clare is a wildly endearing narrator of his own turmoil . . . [his] is a persuasive argument not only against chemical answers to his own illness, but also against the hasty (and often permanent) way individuals are labelled with diagnostic categories

Compelling, beautifully-written and utterly devastating. A balm in itself

Clare brilliantly describes his mania... But he has a wider purpose here. Following his discharge from hospital Clare sets out to explore alternatives to the lifetime of terrifyingly strong medication he has been prescribed

An extraordinary book: deeply moving, darkly funny and hugely powerful. It travels hard country: mania, paranoia, the huge collateral damage of madness. It shows its readers, unforgettably, what it is like to see the world on a "skewed plane". But the star by which it steers is, in the end and above all, love. This book confirms that Horatio Clare is among the most brilliant and compassionate writers of non-fiction I know

Heavy Light is a record of the bravest, most perilous, most intrepid journey that any human being can ever make. It is stricken, moving, urgent, crucial, and deserves to -- and, I don't doubt, will -- stand alongside such classics of the genre as Solomon's Noonday Demon, Leader's What is Madness?, even Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. A luminous, beautiful achievement

Clare is a ferociously gifted writer . . . Just as George Orwell's time in destitution exposed poverty when he was Down and Out in London and Paris so too does Horatio Clare's bravely brilliant and brilliantly brave book expose the failings of the mental health system, even as it intimates hope. In this it reminds one of a very different book, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which not only showed the problem of pesticides but acted as a clarion call . . . Hopefully the shining of a Heavy Light might do the same

A superb and shining achievement . . . Heavy Light is an odyssey for our times, full of hope in an uncertain future . . . a life-changing experience

I tore through Heavy Light, and haven't been able to stop thinking about it

Horatio Clare, whose adventures in the Black Mountains, the Gulf of Bothnia, the Ethiopian Highlands, and the point in the Pacific Ocean furthest on earth from land, have made him one of the most brilliant travel writers of our day, takes us us now to that most challenging country, severe mental illness; and does so with such wit, warmth, and humanity, that, better acquainted with its terrors, we may better face our own

A remarkable tribute both to the depths of human compassion and Clare's extraordinary gifts as an author, witness and guide

Lucid, fluent, utterly unembarrassed . . . a forensic, yet tender account of a plummet into insanity, treatment at the - frequently gentle - hands of the government health service, and eventual redemption . . . a sad, uplifting, timely book

Horatio Clare is a true adventurer and an English original - as vital as Chatwin, as endearing as Withnail. Even when writing about his own breakdown he does so with a poet's ear, brave journalistic insight and, crucially, no shortage of humour. Heavy Light is a white-knuckle descent whose transcendent theme of mania is timeless and universal

The heart of the book is sincere and the linguistic skill exemplary. I can't think of a more astute way to begin the discussions about mental health that must begin than his analysis of how phrases like "I cracked up" or "I broke down"...can have very different meanings in different contexts

A fearless dive into the darks of the mind -- fiercely moving, ruthlessly honest and written with an exquisite care. It is a call for understanding that we all need to hear

Clare takes us inside his head in this profound, compelling account of acute mental illness, which is also a love letter to those who cared for and supported him. And as he recovers, Heavy Light turns into a heartfelt quest to understand what happened to him, and how we can heal those similarly afflicted. This book must have been terribly hard to write, but it feels so important he's done so

Really moving... a call to reconsider treatment options for people who've had breakdowns

Clare... recounts his recovery from that low ebb of mania with acute self-awareness, and in gentle, witty prose

A harrowing, deeply moving and hugely informative story... it's powerful, unsettling and often shocking

A Journey Through Madness, Mania and Healing

'Deeply moving, darkly funny and hugely powerful' Robert Macfarlane 
 
'A brave, lit-up account of going mad and getting better' Jeanette Winterson 
 
After a lifetime of ups and downs, Horatio Clare was committed to hospital under Section 2 of the Mental Health Act. From hypomania in the Alps, to a complete breakdown and a locked ward in Wakefield, this is a gripping account of how the mind loses touch with reality, how we fall apart and how we may heal. 
 
'One of the most brilliant travel writers of our day takes us now to that most challenging country, severe mental illness; and does so with such wit, warmth and humanity' Reverend Richard Coles

Horatio Clare

Books by Horatio Clare

Articles featuring Horatio Clare

Books that can help improve your mental health

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