Guy Mavor

I'm a writer and languages teacher. A childhood split between France and England, and early exposure to the many ways in which people communicate with and misunderstand each other, has led me to explore different cultures during my working life and try to bring them alive in the classroom and on the page.

 

I love history, language, wildlife, conservation, sustainable development, frontier cultures, storytelling and food, and I try to draw these into my professional life. Teaching has been a fantastic channel for it all for a decade and a half. Prior to that I was a travel, TV and sports writer covering anything which paid (and many things which didn't), from TV pitches to European football via South African rural accommodation guides. I launched and edited Real Madrid's first official website, among others, in 2001. I have also developed extensive materials for French and Spanish teaching on teachitlanguages.com and other websites, as well as for exam boards, and EFL material for a range of publishers such as OUP, Cengage and Macmillan.

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Long ago I wrote pitches for TV programmes which were never made. I have recently been extending my range in this area with film scripts which have not been picked up and novels yet to find a publisher. It is a heroic struggle against indifference which keeps me out of trouble, and I actually do feel I'm get better at it every day.

 

In fiction, I completed my first novel, the Treasure Ship in 2021 and it is doing the rounds of literary agencies, aka The Void (I know, they're really busy, everyone wrote a novel in lockdown, but it is really good). 

 

In my travel writing, a recent focus has been www.manyafricas.com, which was a business idea before Covid and is now a simple sustainable travel blog on wild Africa and the people both conserving and developing its economy for tourists and locals alike. I had wanted to shape the market and drive its storytelling away from sub-Hemingway pink-gin fantasies, but I found I was more interested in writing than starting a business, and I was also just picking up on a trend: the industry is increasingly mindful of the impacts it makes, both positive and negative. Africa, now, is a fascinating continent to travel in, for this and many other reasons. Some of my writing has been turned into articles for Travel Africa Magazine.

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Longer-form travel writing projects are in development too. Yes, books! Travel narratives! The ideas and titles are great, and I am currently planning the journeys and pitching to agents. My credentials for doing this are that I am curious, always wanting to dig deeper, and also that I am not a professional travel writer, having to enthuse about the places with the marketing budgets. I like people, movement, conversations, in my own languages and others'. I like listening, observing. I feel ambivalent about the travel industry. But I also dislike whimsy, gimmicky travel. Perhaps I'm just a snob. I do have some experience:  once upon a time, I wrote editions of the Greenwood Guide to South Africa  and Culture Smart! Mexico (don't buy either - they're out of date and I don't get royalties), among other guides, and in 2015 contributed several chapters and an introduction to A Very British Guide to and A Very British Book on Contemporary Mexico, the latter a more expansive coffee table tome. These last two are beautiful books, but distribution was something of an afterthought to the whole commissioning process, so they are only to be found in the Mexican embassy in London and upmarket Mexican hotels and travel operators. 

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guymavor@hotmail.com has been my address for 20+ years, and I'm not changing it now. You can also call me on +44 7767 810170.