He is the oldest son of Rowley Atterbury and puppeteer
Audrey Atterbury (née Holman), who worked on the BBC children's television programme
Andy Pandy in the 1950s. Originally training as a graphic designer, he later went on to work for
Sotheby Publications. He became an historical advisor for
Royal Doulton and was the editor of
Connoisseur magazine from 1980 to 1981. Since 1981, Atterbury has been a
freelance writer, lecturer, broadcaster and exhibition curator. He curated for the
Victoria and Albert Museum in London, his exhibitions there including "
Pugin: a Gothic Passion" (1994) and "Inventing New Britain: the Victorian Vision" (2001). Atterbury has written or edited over 30 books, mostly on
ceramics. He has published books of old postcards showing
Eype and
West Bay, two
Dorset villages. He is also known for his travel writing, and has written books on railways and canals. When
British Waterways commissioned Robert Nicholson Publications to produce a series of guides to their waterways in the early 1970s, Atterbury and Andrew Darwin were supplied with a chartered boat and a student to drive it, in which they toured the canal network, producing the material for what became the first edition of the
Nicholson Guides. Until 2003, Atterbury was chairman of the
Little Angel Theatre puppet theatre in
Islington, north London. In 2007, Atterbury appeared on
Channel 4's
archaeology series
Time Team talking about
Augustus Pugin, and in 2009 he narrated
BBC Four's documentary
The Last Days of the Liners which examined how, in the years following World War II, countries competed to launch the most magnificent passenger ships on the great ocean routes. He is a
Fellow of the
Royal Society of Arts. The 1978 rescue of the
Gilbert Bayes Doulton House Frieze during demolition of the former Royal Doulton Pottery premises in the
Albert Embankment, Lambeth, was only made possible by the efforts of Atterbury. Atterbury is the owner of the only remaining Teddy puppet from the television series
Andy Pandy that is not kept as part of a museum collection; it was originally a gift to his mother. He lives in
Weymouth in Dorset with his second wife, Chrissie, whom he married in 2002. ==Selected publications==