Max Adams

Max Adams has written more than a dozen books on Early Medieval history and archaeology, on trees, woodlands and wood, alongside biography and a novel, The Ambulist. He combines writing with travel, managing two young woodlands in the North-east of England, and teaching Creative Writing at Newcastle University. His latest work, The Mercian Chronicles, is published in hardback in 2024. His following book will cover Early Medieval Northumbria (with Colm O'Brien); and after that will come Domesday Walking, an account of 1000 miles of walks through England looking at the English and their landscapes, ten centuries after the Norman Conquest. You can find out more on Max's website, The Ambulist. There you'll find interviews, reviews, pages on books, travel, trees and woods. You can also keep up to date with book projects, signings, talks and other events. Max Adams is an archaeologist, historian and traveller, the author of numerous articles and journal papers. Born in 1961 in London, he was educated at the University of York, where he read Archaeology. After a professional career which included the notorious excavations at Christchurch Spitalfields, and several years as Director of Archaeological Services at Durham University, Max went to live in a 40-acre woodland in County Durham for three years. He wrote and presented two feature documentaries for Tyne-Tees Television and made thirty short films as the 'Landscape Detective'. In 2003 he won a Winston Churchill Memorial Fellowship to research the life of Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, which led to his first biographical project. He was awarded an Elizabeth Longford Award in 2005 to support research into the life and times of the painter John Martin; and in 2014 he was given a Roger Deakin Award to support the research for In the Land of Giants. Since 2004 he has mixed writing with travelling and teaching. He was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Newcastle from 2010-2013. Max is Co-Director of Research of the Bernician Studies Group, a lifelong learning charity, and a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Classics, History and Archaeology at Newcastle University. He holds a PGCE from the University of Sunderland. His research interests include Northumbria's ancient woodlands and the Early Medieval landscapes of the Inishowen peninsula in County Donegal.