Renowned author and former Mid Wales journalist has passed away

Author, broadcaster and former Mid Wales Journal reporter Phil Rickman passed away last week at the age of 74.

Lancashire-born Rickman spent most of his adult life in Herefordshire and the Welsh

 borders.

He was the author of 27 novels, including two under the name Will Kingdom and

 two as Thom Madley, as well as short stories and non-fiction.

His debut novel, Candlenight, was published by Duckworth in 1991 and sold over half a million copies worldwide. It was later reissued by his current publisher, Atlantic Books’ imprint Corvus.

He is best known for the popular Merrily Watkins novels, a unique crime fiction series with

supernatural elements set in the Welsh borders, whose titular character is both a vicar and

 an exorcist.

Beginning with The Wine of Angels, first published in 1998, the Merrily Watkins

series currently spans fifteen novels, with a sixteenth, The Echo of Crows, slated for release

 by Corvus in 2025.

The series was adapted into a three-part ITV drama featuring Anna Maxwell Martin as Merrily Watkins in 2015.

When Phil Rickman moved to the Welsh border over 40 years ago, having left a busy, newsroom job in his native Lancashire due to health issues, he brought not just a zeal for local journalism, but a developing fascination for the area. 

After working for the Mid Wales Journal, he went on to BBC Radio Wales, scooping awards along the way, before launching his first book, Candlenight on an atmospheric All Hallow’s Eve in Hay-on-Wye.

With the unfailing support of his journalist wife, Carol, he painstakingly researched old stories, such as Elizabeth I’s enigmatic astronomer and alchemist John Dee who lived in Radnorshire, the findings of Victorian writer of spectral tales, M.R. James and Wordworth’s ghostly experiences at Goodrich when composing ‘Tintern Abbey’.

But five years ago Phil found himself struggling to present a funeral tribute to the late King of Hay, Richard Booth.

“I was wiped out with weariness, even my voice was failing,” he later explained. The following day he discovered the reason: he had suffered a stroke. It came at a time when he was halfway through a novel, and with characteristic dry wit he announced to his keen readership that he had been “clobbered with an elf-stroke”.

Phil worked for the Mid Wales Journal until 1983, when Tony Boyce took over as Shropshire Newspapers’ district reporter.

“Our paths often crossed,” said Tony. “Phil was a great one for turning up the unusual which was, no doubt, one of the reasons he went on to become a successful author and was invited regularly to Hay Festival.” . 

Retired photojournalist Ernie Husson worked with Phil on the Mid Wales Journal.

Ernie said: “Phil came down from Lancashire he had been a journalist on a weekly paper there. After a while he went freelance doing his writing and working for the BBC.

“In the early 2000’s Phil opened a photographic exhibition for me at the Radnorshire Museum in Llandrindod Wells.

“He was a fine, fair and investigative journalist whether he was working for local newspapers, his books or the BBC with his weekly programme Phil the Shelf.

“He was great to work with, he had a good sense of humour and we got on well.

“My thoughts are with his wife Carol and his family at this sad time.”

Former BBC and Brecon and Radnor reporter and Founder of Llandegley International Airpport, Nicholas Whitehead said; “Phil was the Mid Wales Journal reporter in the second half of the 1970s. 

“I turned up in Llandrindod in 1977 to work in a bookshop. I soon became the press officer for the Central Wales Energy Group which campaigned against the proposal to dispose of radioactive waste in mid Wales. 

“That was how Phil and I first met and how we got to know each other. He lived with his wife, Carol, in a house between Llandrindod and Builth Wells. 

Phil Rickman’s writing work has been widely reviewed and praised over the years, with his writing acclaimed by an array of authors, including Steven King, Bernard Cornwell, Peter James, Barbara Erskine, John Connolly and Elly Griffiths.

Having started his working life as a journalist and broadcaster, for many years Rickman also

presented the BBC Radio Wales programme ‘Phil the Shelf’, which featured book news,

 author interviews and advice for unpublished writers.

He was a long-serving mainstay of the Hay Festival, and lived just up the road from Hay-on-Wye, in a beautiful farmhouse surrounded by rescue donkeys, dogs, and the occasional peacock,

Phil is survived by his wife Carol – his first reader and sternest editor.

Phil’s current editor, Sarah Hodgson, said: “I first encountered Phil down the line from a

studio at broadcasting house in London when I participated in an episode of ‘Phil the Shelf’

many years ago, and had no inkling that I would one day have the privilege of publishing his

 work.

“He was known for his kindness and gentleness of spirit, and he had a unique creative

 vision.

“His loss will be felt deeply by all who had the pleasure of knowing and working with

 him, and by his many readers around the world.

“It is some consolation that he had already delivered his next, and now final, novel, called ‘The Echo of Crows’ a new case for his wonderful heroine Merrily Watkins, which we are proud to be publishing on the Corvus list next year.”

His agents Ed Wilson and Andrew Hewson at Johnson & Alcock added: “Crimewriting has

lost a true one-off in Phil Rickman – a writer whose kindness and generosity, both with fans

 and other writers, was as well-known as his brilliant books.

“His career spanned decades and genres – from the early horror novels, to crime and supernatural thrillers, YA novels (before the term ‘YA’ existed) and even historical, with his two brilliant Dr Dee novels. He was a unique and wonderful man, and managed to be both commercially successful (the Merrily series sold over 300k copies) and also a cult author. 

“His Facebook group PRAS (the Phil Rickman Appreciation Society) was one of the earliest on the platform, and there has been an outpouring of emotion online from the rich and varied community of fans. It is fitting tribute to his indefatigability that his final act was to complete another Merrily novel, which will be published in 2025 for his fans to enjoy.”