Clarence Ellis was born in Holyhead in 1889. He studied History at Bangor and served on the Western Front before beginning a career in Further Education. His private passion was pebble collecting, and Pebbles on the Beach was first published in 1954. Robert Macfarlane was born in Nottinghamshire in 1976, and is currently a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He has written a number of bestselling, prize-winning books about the relationships between nature, language and people, including The Wild Places , The Old Ways , and Landmarks . His books have won the Guardian First Book Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the Boardman-Tasker Award, and his journalism has appeared in the Guardian, Sunday Times, and New York Times. His most recent book is the Sunday Times bestseller The Lost Words, illustrated by Jackie Morris.