Paul Rowley Atterbury, FRSA is a British antiques expert, known for his many appearances since 1979 on the BBC TV programme Antiques Roadshow. He specialises in the art, architecture, design and decorative arts of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Biography
He is the oldest son of Rowley Atterbury and puppeteer Audrey Atterbury, who worked on the 1950s children's Watch With Mother programme Andy Pandy for the BBC and who, it is claimed, based the character's appearance on that of her son. He was educated at Westminster School and the University of East Anglia. 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 most frequently curates for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, his exhibitions there including "Pugin: a Gothic Passion" and "Inventing New Britain: the Victorian Vision". Atterbury has written or edited over thirty 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 Theatrepuppet theatre in Islington, north London. He has toured the country with his stage show 'Have You Had it Long Madam?' with fellow Antiques Roadshow expert Hilary Kay; the show visited Australia in 2009. In 2007, Atterbury appeared on Channel 4's archaeology series Time Team, 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. Atterbury is the owner of the only remaining Teddy puppet from the television seriesAndy Pandy, that is not kept as part of a museum collection, which was a gift to his mother. He lives in Weymouth in Dorset with his second wife, Chrissie, whom he married in 2002.
