Simon Whaley lives in rural Shropshire, on the Welsh Borders, having escaped from Greater London in the late 1990s. His first published piece was a word search puzzle, aged 17, and he’s since written over 850 articles in publications as varied as BBC Countryfile, Country Walking, The People’s Friend, The Daily Express, The Observer, Outdoor Photography, Coast, The Simple Things and Writing Magazine.

Image credit © Simon Whaley (yes, he used the camera's self-timer!)

His first book, One Hundred Ways For A Dog To Train Its Human, was published by Hodder & Stoughton in September 2003, with an initial print run of 10,000 copies. By the end of December 2003, over 100,000 copies had been sold to bookshops, and the book spent three weeks on the UK’s Top Ten Non-Fiction paperback bestseller lists. (Lifetime sales now exceed over a quarter of a million copies.) He became a full-time writer in January 2004. He’s since written over a dozen non-fiction books, and recently published the second novel in his Marquess of Mortiforde cosy crime series.



Simon has worked for a variety of organisations including a high street bank in southwest London, a government development agency, and a local authority somewhere on the Welsh Borders. When not writing, he enjoys walking and photography. When he’s not writing, he’s out taking photographs, particularly around his home patch of Shropshire, on the Welsh Borders. He also a BBC WeatherWatchersubmitting photos on a frequent basis, which have been broadcast on both regional and national weather forecasts, under the name of Snapper Simon.

You can keep up to date with Simon via his free newsletter, Writing from the Welsh Borders.