My family were craftsmen, goldsmiths and silversmiths in London since the 18th century. They include Claudius Ash, who in the 1820s was one of the pioneering inventors of false teeth.

My father was a bookbinder who worked in the British Museum Library before serving in the RAF in World War II.

I was born in Surrey, part of the post-war baby boom. We moved to Bedford where I went to primary school and Bedford Modern School, played with Bayko and Meccano and watched cowboy films at the Bedford Granada Saturday matinée (where I also saw the Beatles live on 6 February 1963) and then to Durham University where I studied Anthropology and Geography.

I started in publishing in 1967, as a picture researcher on the partwork Man Myth & Magic, worked for Reader’s Digest, and for Newsweek Books on their Wonders of Man series. With Ian Grant, I established the publishing company Ash & Grant (1973–78), and was a director of Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1980–83) – where I published a range of books and worked with authors including Dame Edna Everage – and Pavilion Books (1984–88), where I published Hockney Posters and numerous other books, but I have primarily been a freelance writer of and contributor to over 100 non-fiction books.

 

I have written for adults and children in subjects ranging across reference, art, history, biography and humour. I have not previously written fiction, but I am currently working on several novels for children.

I am a Director and Management Committee member of The Society of Authors and member of the Biographers’ Club, and was Chairman of the South Coast Publishers Group (latterly the Sussex Book Group). I am married to Caroline Ash, until recently the Director of the Rockinghorse Appeal, a children’s medical charity, and have a daughter and two sons. I have lived in Lewes, East Sussex, since 1991.

[Not to be confused with Russell (Harvey) Ash (born Ohio, USA, 12 December 1910, died Los Angeles 4 June 1974, buried Forest Lawn), a bit-part Hollywood actor who appeared as one of the 68,894 uncredited extras in Around the World in Eighty Days (1956).]

Press features about Russell Ash:

Wonderful World by Michael Thorn

Times Educational Supplement, 16 September 2005

Russell Ash: Face Behind the Facts by Nicholas Tucker

The Independent, 16 December 2005

Cultureshock interview by Juliet Rix

Guardian, 26 August 2006

Online interview with Anthony James Barnett

1 May 2008