Writing about Landscapes and Memory

East Yorkshire to Bulgaria

Upcoming Memoir

My memoir, 'Waiting for the Goats,' explores goat farming, yoghurt, death and the ruins of the recent past in a Bulgarian village. All of this and more through the lens of an English archaeologist who went off to Bulgaria to go back to the land.

Fimber Press

A new and very small press set up to promote writings that cross borders and boundaries. The press takes its name from a tiny village on the Yorkshire Wolds. Fimberpress.co.uk

Writing Journey

I worked as an archaeologist for twenty years in UK and wrote books and articles on prehistoric and historic landscapes (as Chris Fenton-Thomas). This focussed on themes of memory in landscape and long term change in the rural past.

2025 Release

Upcoming memoir 'Waiting for the Goats' explores the experience of living in a Bulgarian village dealing with local attitudes to death, psychogeography of the village and the forgotten corners of Bulgarian history.

Fimber Press

I set up Fimber Press to publish 'Waiting for the Goats.' It is named after a village in East Yorkshire where I did lots of landscape research. It is a special place in the middle of the Yorkshire Worlds, somewhere from another time and the birthplace of the East Yorkshire antiquarian JR Mortimer.

In 2010, I moved to Bulgaria to set up a smallholding and retreat centre and there, I began to write creative non-fiction and poetry, inspired by my new surroundings. My writing on the Bulgarian village draws on self sufficiency and farming but also reflects the same themes I knew from my academic work such as landscape history and our relationship with the past in the places where we live.