Bruce Chatwin was born on 13 May 1940 in Sheffield, the elder son of solicitor Charles Chatwin and his wife Margharita Turnell. He was educated at Marlborough College, and in 1958 he began working for auction house Sotheby’s, starting out as a porter and soon rising to become head of the Department of Antiquities and of the Department of Impressionist Art. At Sotheby’s he met Elizabeth Chanler, whom he married in 1965.

In 1966, citing failing eyesight and dissatisfaction with the art business, Chatwin left Sotheby’s to study archaeology at Edinburgh University. However he left after two years without taking a degree, instead deciding to pursue a career as a writer, originally pitching a book on nomads, but unable to get it published. In the early 1970s he began working for The Sunday Times, at first as an advisor on art and architecture and then as a journalist. Inspired by a conversation with designer Eileen Gray, in November 1974 Chatwin travelled to Patagonia, and these travels became the subject of his first published book In Patagonia (1977).

His next book, The Viceroy of Ouidah (1980) was a fictionalised biography of a Brazilian slave trader, based on Chatwin’s research, done during his travels in Dahomey (now Benin). Although it did not sell well on first publication, it was well-received by critics and later adapted into the film Cobra Verde (1987), directed by Werner Herzog. This book was followed by On the Black Hill (1982), a novel about two brothers who live their entire lives in a farmhouse in the Welsh borders – an intentional move away from travel writing. In The Songlines (1987) Chatwin returned to the subject of nomads, incorporating this with an exploration of Aboriginal creation myths, while his final novel Utz (1988) was a study of a Czech collector of Meissen porcelain.

Shortly after finishing The Songlines, Chatwin collapsed in a street in Switzerland. He died on 18 January 1989 in Nice, France, and his ashes were scattered near a Byzantine chapel above Kardamyli, Greece.