Rachel Hewitt is a prize-winning non-fiction writer. She writes about feminism and women’s lives, past and present; grief, trauma and recovery; and running and the ‘great outdoors’.
Rachel’s first book, the bestselling Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey (Granta, 2010), told the history of Britain’s national mapping agency, for the very first time. Map of a Nation won the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award for Non-Fiction and was shortlisted for the Galaxy Non-Fiction Awards, the Scottish Book Awards, the Bristol Festival of Ideas Book Prize and BBC History Magazine‘s Book Prize.
Her second book, A Revolution of Feeling: The Decade that Forged the Modern Mind (Granta, 2017), won a Gladstone’s Library Political Writing Residency and shows how our modern ideas about emotion first emerged in the tumultuous decade of the 1790s.
Rachel’s third book, In Her Nature: How Women Break Boundaries in the Great Outdoors (Chatto, 2023), shines a light on female experiences of running, hiking and climbing; stories which have too often been overshadowed by masculine ideas about sport. It was awarded the Eccles British Library Writer’s Award, a Highly Commended award in the 2024 Charles Tyrwhitt Sports Book Awards, and was shortlisted for the British Society of Sport History’s literary prize.
The Last Bastion: The History of Women in Sport, 1984-2024 is Rachel’s most recent book, and was a private commission for the charity Women in Sport. Through the eyes of remarkable women who founded and ran that organisation, The Last Bastion traces the striking progress and infuriating obstacles that have been experienced by sportswomen over the last forty years.
Rachel’s most recent writing is published on her Substack newsletter, Small Revolutions, Every Day.
She has a PhD in English Literature (London), as well as a BA and Master of Studies (both Oxford). She has worked at the universities of Oxford, Glamorgan, Queen Mary (London), and Newcastle. She is now a full-time writer and lives in North Yorkshire, where she runs across the Moors and the Wolds, and shepherds multiple children and animals.