Clive Aslet is an award-winning writer and journalist, acknowledged as a leading authority on Britain and its way of life. In 1977 he joined the magazine Country Life, was for 13 years its Editor and is now Editor at Large. He writes extensively for papers such as the Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Sunday Times, and often broadcasts on television and radio. A well-known campaigner on the countryside and other issues, he has studied the debate about climate change since attending the Kyoto Protocol negotiations in 1997.

Clive’s first book The Last Country Houses was published in 1982. Since then he has written on architecture in the United States, on British identity, on the countryside and on the House of Lords. Lady Antonia Fraser, reviewing Landmarks of Britain, published in 2005, called it ‘a brilliant, far-ranging enterprise’. Jenny Uglow wrote that his latest book, The English House, ‘is a thorough treat’: Clive is ‘the perfect guide’ to the subject, ‘combining long experience with a light touch.’ He is now travelling the length and breadth of Britain, from Cornwall to Caithness, for a book about villages.

Married to Naomi, who is a publisher, with three sons, William, Johnny and Jojo (whose real name is Charles), Clive divides his time between Pimlico, in central London, and Ramsgate, on the Kent coast. He likes talking, eating and the arts, but doesn’t do hobbies much. ‘ Why should I? My working life is organised around all the things I feel passionately about.’ He wrote A Horse in the Country about his budding equestrian life but is now back on two feet. In another existence he would like to be an opera singer, a chef or William Cobbett.

Sir Max Hastings, newspaper editor and historian: ‘Clive Aslet has been an extraordinarily informed and influential standard-bearer for the cause of the countryside and Britain's heritage for many years. He is an exceptionally thoughtful and fluent man, who lends distinction to any form with which he is engaged.’

David Dimbleby, broadcaster: ‘Charming, erudite, amusing...His energy, enthusiasm and learning, always lightly worn, are prodigious.’