Described by the Guardian as “one of Britain’s finest pop culture historians”, Travis Elborough has been a freelance writer, author, broadcaster and cultural commentator for two decades now. Elborough’s books include Wish You Were Here: England on Sea, The Long-Player Goodbye, a hymn to vinyl records that inspired the BBC4 documentary 'When Albums Ruled the World', in which he also appeared, and A Walk in the Park, a loving exploration of public parks and green space. His most recent book, Through the Looking Glasses: The Spectacular Life of Spectacles, was published to immediate acclaim, saluted as "fascinating" by the Observer, while New Statesman stated, "It will make you look at specs with fresh eyes."
He also wrote and devised the popular and award-winning series of ‘Unexpected’ Atlases, illustrated by the cartographers Alan Horsfield and Martin Brown. Elborough has edited several anthologies, including Our History of the 20th Century: As Told in Diaries, Journals and Letters and Letters to Change the World: From Emmeline Pankhurst to Martin Luther King, Jr.
Elborough regularly appears on Radio 4 and wrote and presented the five-part series, The Rise and Fall of the Antique, for the station, and is a frequent contributor to Financial Times, the Spectator and the Guardian, among other newspapers and magazines.
With Bob Stanley from Saint Etienne, he also co-wrote the script for How We Used to Live, a BFI archive film directed by Paul Kelly, and premiered at the 2013 London Film Festival.
Travis Elborough has also lectured on creative and critical writing at the Arvon Foundation at The Ted Hughes Arvon Centre, Lumb Bank and the Royal College of Art in London. He is currently a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Westminster, teaching M.A. creative writing students in the Facility of Social Science and Humanities.
Elborough is available for freelance writing and other commissions and public events. His clients have included the University of the Third Age, the staff and curators at the London Transport Museum, the Museum of London and the National Army Museum, and the publishers HarperCollins and Pan Macmillan, BBC4, BBC Online and the Unity agency.
He is also proud to be a patron of Southwark Park.
Alongside writing, Elborough is an accomplished photographer, his portraits of writers, poets and musicians, such as Geoff Nicholson, Daljit Nagra and Damo Sazuki, and landscapes have been published in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the Observer, New Statesman, the Wire and Coast magazine. He also shot the cover photograph for the Subway Sect's 2021 album 'Moments Like These'.
Website: http://traviselborough.co.uk/
Agent: Margaret Halton