As part of Dan’s series of in-conversation events with brilliant women around the UK – some adventurers, some artists, some writers – who embody something of Dorothy’s buccaneering, transcendent spirit, join us when historian Kassia St Clair talks about Dorothy Pilley’s legacy with Dan.

Dan Richards is an acclaimed non-fiction writer specialising in art, travel and adventure. His first book, Holloway – co-authored with Robert Macfarlane and illustrated by Stanley Donwood – was published by Faber and became a Sunday Times bestseller. Dan’s second book, The Beechwood Airship Interviews took a journey into the creative process, headspaces and workplaces of some of Britain’s celebrated artists and craftsman including Bill Drummond, Dame Judi Dench, Jenny Saville, Manic Street Preachers and Stewart Lee.

Climbing Days is an exploration of the writing and climbing lives of Dan’s great-great-aunt and uncle, Dorothy Pilley and I. A. Richards. Using Dorothy’s 1935 mountaineering memoir as a guide, Dan climbed across Europe, ending with an ascent of the mighty Dent Blanche in the high Alps of Valais.

His latest title is Outpost, a book about far-flung shelters and eyries, isolation and wilderness. Asking what draws people to the ends of the world, Outpost features visits to Cairngorm bothies, French lighthouses, Japanese shrines, Icelandic sæluhús, and hot air balloon odysseys in Svalbard.