I am a journalist and writer. I am from Newcastle but have lived all over Europe and beyond.
I was a foreign news journalist with the BBC World Service for fourteen years. I worked as the BBC correspondent in both Sarajevo and Warsaw, and reported from across the world - from Russia and the Caucasus to Sierra Leone and the US.
For four years I was the Communications Director at the award-winning think tank the European Council on Foreign Relations.
If you are looking for a book about a forgotten medieval superpower and a story involving prostitutes, slaves, pirates, footballers, chocolate makers, flower sellers, transsexuals, explorers and the Black Death, you could do far worse than buy a copy of my book, "Genoa 'La Superba': the rise and fall of a merchant pirate superpower".