Where Do I Begin?

I’m now a full time author, but I have had a very varied career that began in the Met Office then Air Traffic Control with a brief spell as an aviation journalist.
That’s all before becoming a Christmas historian, environmental consultant, ski Instructor in Scotland, inventor of ‘Skirider’, public speaker, writer, broadcaster, editorial photographer and founding a charity helping armed service veterans into civilian life, through the green economy.

My parents were unusual. My father was sent to the notorious Vorkuta Gulag, escaped, walked to Iran then joined the RAF before marrying my mother in 1944 who had to give up working at the top secret intelligence station of Bletchley Park. She was a natural teacher, erudite, with many interesting connections through her Reuters war correspondent father. Much of my ability on podcasts and language were courtesy of this truly remarkable woman, who all agree was beautiful right up to the day she died at 98.  

It wasn’t an easy childhood as some of my early years were spent in a Nissen hut situated among the disused wartime remains of RAF Holmsley in the New Forest, surrounded by resettled gypsies many of whom felt hemmed in and had no intention of toeing any line whatsoever. I suppose it was character forming but as Dad couldn’t go back to Poland with any chance of staying alive, it gave me an early sense of what the legacy of WW2 meant and the plight of refugees.

My childhood wasn’t exactly wild, but it was free with a lot of time spent outdoors either in the countryside or by the sea, both of which I love. By the age of eight, my then headmaster referred to me as a walking encyclopaedia.  
In many ways, I have been brought up with a very European view, valuing research, literacy and an inbuilt curiosity about the world around me.
I’m interested in art, read widely, love fishing in all its many forms, sail, ski and take a delight in picking up foreign languages and have been a sometime pilot.