Biography

I have written poetry and short stories from a young age. I graduated from Oxford with a drinker’s first (2.1) probably due to my propensity to spend more time in the theatre, editing a creative writing magazine as well as being sub editor of a student newspaper, along with other convivial pursuits, rather than in a lecture theatre or writing essays. My lifelong love of drama and storytelling echoes through my work. Fables and Forgotten Thoughts is my first novel. I formulated the idea for this book as a form of escapism while I was miserable living and working in London, and started to write it once I threw in the towel, gathered what savings I had and escaped to Bologna, where I lived until recently. I found Bologna inspired me. As the city is home to the oldest university in Europe there is a general passion about the state of the world, the future and about politics. In part I owe the development of Fables to living there, to the atmosphere and the people I chatted to over many a drink.

As a writer I am interested in exploring the idea of morality and inverting it, and the fundamentals that make people what they are. I also enjoy aspects of the extraordinary. In my opinion the ideal novel is one that has a gripping story but that leaves you with elements to think about after you have finished reading it. I write about variety of topics and a cross section of people. My short stories cover a range of ideas from examining the concept of daydreaming to the nature of obsession. As well as short story writing I am also working on two further novels. One is a historical novel about Anna Komnene, a Byzantine princess, author of the Alexiad and would-be usurper of her brother’s throne. The other is a novel with two plots running parallel, one about a man who wakes up from a seventeen year coma and decides to try and rebuild his lost past, and a black comedy about a woman who, disillusioned with her philandering husband and her job, decides to get her own back on life in general, making up for the things she feels she has lost.