Oliver Smith is an award winning travel journalist. For 10 years he travelled the world working for Lonely Planet Magazine. Today his work can be found in various outlets – FT Weekend, The Times and National Geographic Traveller – he also writes a regular walking column for Waitrose Weekend.

Oliver has been named Travel Writer of the Year on four occasions in the UK, and is the recipient of the Lowell Thomas Gold Award for reporting in Outside Magazine in the United States.

His first book: The Atlas of Abandoned Places: A Journey Through the World’s Forgotten Wonders was published by Octopus in 2022.

His first narrative travel book: On a Holy Island: A Modern Pilgrimage Across Britain, sets out to radically reframe our idea of 'pilgrimage' in Britain by retracing sacred travel made across time, and is published in March 2024 by Bloomsbury.