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, National Geographic Traveller and The Wall Street Journal among them.

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 was published in March 2024 by Bloomsbury in the UK and Pegasus in the USA.

recent journalism

Off the radar: In search of my grandfather in Arctic Iceland
(FT Weekend, 2024)
Nostalgia on the Night Riviera
(FT Weekend, 2025)
The Wild Archipelago at the end of the Earth
(FT Weekend, 2025)
Childhood memories of a Burial Chamber
(Wall Street Journal, 2025)

selected journalism

The Pub at the End of the World
(Outside, 2020)
Grief and Deep Time on Chesil Beach

(FT Weekend, 2023)
The Sudden Solitude of the Desert of Wales
(FT Weekend 2022)
Hiking the Jordan Trail
(Lonely Planet magazine, 2015)

talks 2024-2025

17 April 2024 British Pilgrimage Trust, St James Clerkenwell

18 April 2024 Toppings Ely

4 July 2024 Byline Times Festival with Stone Club

27 August 2024 Waterstones Canterbury

5 September 2024 Southwark Cathedral

9 October 2024 Waterstones St Albans

17 October 2024 Waterstones Norwich

5 November 2024 Bridport Literary Festival

8 November 2024 St Peter in the Forest, E17

17 November 2024 Folkestone Book Festival

24 November 2024 Kendal Mountain Festival (Macs stage)

23 February 2025 Faversham Literary Festival

corporate

Oliver Smith has worked producing corporate content and video for a large number of clients, including British Red Cross, Mammut, Barclaycard, GoPro, Land Rover, Sport England, Guardian Labs and Waitrose Weekend. Some recent examples below:

British Red Cross Connecting Communities Project

Producer / Director, 2022

Mammut: The Old Way

Writer, 2022

get in touch

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Twitter/X @olismithtravel
Insta @olismithtravel

Literary Agent: Lisette Verhagen at Peters Fraser + Dunlop
Photography: Jonathan Stokes