Horatio Clare’s first book, Running for the Hills, an acclaimed account of a Welsh childhood, won a Somerset Maugham Award, was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and saw Horatio shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. His subsequent books include Truant, A Single Swallow (shortlisted for the Dolman Travel Book of the Year), The Prince’s Pen and the best-selling travelogue, Down to the Sea in Ships (winner of the Dolman Travel Book of the Year). His essays and reviews appear regularly in the national press and on BBC radio.

Horatio’s first book for children, Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot, was awarded the Branford Boase Award 2016. The sequel Aubrey and the Terrible Ladybirds appeared in 2017. Both Aubrey books were longlisted for the Carnegie Medal. In 2017 Chatto and Windus published Icebreaker - A Voyage Far North, the record of a journey around the Bay of Bothnia with the Finnish government's Icebreaker Otso, and in 2018 Elliott & Thompson published his evocation of winter The Light in the Dark: A Winter Journal.