Inside the Devon home of travel guide founder Hilary Bradt

But I had been forewarned; Hilary Bradt’s directions on finding where she lived were: ‘You can’t miss the house, there’s a tiger in the garden’.

Hilary opens the front door with a big welcoming smile – she must love telling people how to identify her home. I’m sure the tiger is smiling too – there’s one lounging across a stone seat, just a few feet away. Perhaps he’s eyeing up that lemur, as Devon Life Magazine discovered.

A tiger sits outside the house Before we head inside I take another look at what must be one of the most unusual front gardens in Seaton. There’s a herd of animal sculptures gathered around on the gravel, lemurs, birds, dogs, antelopes, a cheetah… It’s a wonderful, joyous collection of creatures, and they’ve all been made by Hilary.

Hilary is best known for her work as a writer and publisher. Fifty years ago, with her then husband George, she founded Bradt Travel Guides. The couple were true adventurers, pioneers in the field of travel books.

Bradt guides were the first to go to many worldwide destinations and championed sustainable travel long before it was fashionable. The company is internationally renowned and still going strong, publishing around 40 new or updated guides every year.

There’s a cheetah in the garden Hilary has an MBE for services to tourism; now in her 80s, she has mostly stepped back from Bradt guides, although she’s about to go up to London to mark its 50th anniversary celebrations at the Royal Geographical Society.

The first Bradt guide was a little yellow booklet, a homemade guide to hiking in South America. It was made on a shoestring and included some drawings by Hilary.

Those drawings hint at another little known aspect of this remarkable woman. Hilary is recognised around the world for her explorations and travel writings, but only a handful of people know her for her artwork. And yet it’s a skill that’s been with her throughout her life.

She modestly describes herself as a ‘hobby sculptor’. Her home is filled with her creations, an eclectic menagerie made from clay, stone, wire and papier mache and wood.

A letter Hilary wrote to her auntie when she was a child shows her love of drawing horses As we go through the hall, she picks up a little wood carving of a dog on a sideboard. It’s sort of where it all began, she tells me.

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Teenage Hilary was sent to Innsbruck University, ‘to improve my German and learn how to grow up. I hated it,’ she says. However, through of all things, talking about art to the local optician, she ended up going along to a wood working class, where she made this little dog.

Hilary always could draw and paint, she loved to draw horses when she was at school; but this new medium revealed her natural ability to visualise and create in three dimensions.

Art college beckoned, but her mother advised against it.

Hilary blacksmithing at West Dean in 2008 ‘She very sensibly said, “I don’t think you’re good enough to be a professional artist, you’d have to teach, and are you sure you’d like teaching?” ‘

It was good advice, says Hilary, who then opted to train as an occupational therapist. In one way, it allowed her to continue being creative. She had to learn craft skills which were used in the activity programmes to help treat patients. ‘It was rehab through activity rather than just exercise.’

Working in OT also enabled her to pursue another passion, that of exploring and travelling.

‘I worked in the US, in Cape Town, in Scotland, you could always get a job in OT in those days.’

Working her way around the world, saving up to do her backpacking adventures, led to the setting up of the Bradt publishing company and her subsequent career as a writer and publisher. But Hilary never really stopped her artwork; it was something she’s always returned to.

Guinea pigs are a Hilary favourite Where did this desire to create art come from?

‘I was no good at school. I think I was a very insecure young person, I felt a failure, I was sometimes told I was a failure. But the drawing and then the woodwork was something I could do – and you want to do what you’re good at,’ she replies.

She went through a particularly creative time when she was training as an OT. Having to retake a part of the course which she’d failed, she found herself alone in a bedsit in Oxford, all her friends having left to start their careers. She took to carving her wooden animals.

‘I eventually became quite a good OT, but it took quite a while and I had to repeat my hospital practice because I was so unsure of myself. But art was something I could do. I think it was as simple as that.’

Hilary likes to create work from scrap metal, like this dragon Her confidence grew over the years and by the time she was in her fifties and immersed in Bradt guides, she had also taken up stone carving, and was choosing to go on sculpture courses every time she had a holiday.

She enrolled on many courses at West Dean College near Chichester, and was taught by artists including ‘the wonderful’ Dick Onians and Brendan Hesmondhalgh ‘an inspired artist – I love his work and I love his teaching’.

Hilary still attends courses across the country and now has her own shared studio where she goes to work once a week, experimenting with different techniques. She adores experimenting.

‘As a hobby sculptor like me I don’t have to find my voice, I don’t have to just work in one medium getting better and better at it. So you can see I’ve done all sorts of things!

‘I’ve had so many lovely teachers and I’m trying all these different media. The only complete failure was glass blowing – gosh I was bad at it! Absolutely dreadful!’

Sitting in Hilary’s living room we’re surrounded by books, paintings and artwork, among which are her own animal sculptures. There are dragons, an armadillo, a hare and a group of guinea pigs. They all seem to have names.

Hilary’s original baby elephant made in clay while on a course with Brendan Hesmonhalgh A resin cast of a baby elephant lies on its side, just in front of the fireplace. It’s taken from an original clay sculpture made at West Dean. It’s one of which Hilary is particularly proud. It was the first work she sold, having joined The South West Sculptors Association, an organisation she credits with supporting and helping her and ‘giving me the confidence to think I could sell’.

As part of her preparations for the Bradt anniversary trip to London Hilary has made a sculpture to raffle. It’s another lemur, and animal that is very close to her heart, coming from a country she has developed strong ties to, Madagascar.

In a flash of that teenage anxiety, she tells me she’s worried about how well it will do, but the moment soon passes – because she has after all enjoyed making it.

‘I think I’m extraordinarily lucky to now be in my 80s and have something I’ve loved doing as well as the writing. The writing will dry up as I do less travelling- but I can always make things, can’t I?’

hilarybradt.com

The lemur that went to London