In a 25 year career with the BBC I covered some historic stories, worked with amazing world-class professionals and developed a wide range of skills. I worked in war zones and other challenging environments, and produced high quality material for TV, Radio and the Web. 

I spent a total of 13 months in Baghdad between 2004 and 2009.  Iraq's first democratically elected president, Jalal Talabani, was kind enough to call me "a friend of the Iraqi people". 

It was a terrible time for Iraq. During one of my month-long stints in charge of the bureau I heard 140 explosions. I visited bomb scenes, saw some horrific things, and our team had some close shaves. This is me in 2008 holding the remains of a rocket that had just come through the office roof (it was taken by an AFP photographer as part of a 'pool' distribution arrangement).

This is from an event at the Imperial War Museum in London, where, with others from 1st Option Safety, I was giving a lecture about the challenges of covering news in a war zone. I was standing next to the wreckage of a car blown up in an explosion that I had heard. I was working for First Option Safety as a Hostile Environment Course instructor, and provided written and video content for their website, including this:

I was lucky enough to be invited to give a poetry reading at Gloucester Cathedral as part of an event about war poets in 2018. It was a huge honour to perform some of my poems in front of a stained glass window commemorating the WW1 poet Ivor Gurney. 

You can see more about my published poems here

Since settling in Munich in the spring of 2018 I have had a wide range of really interesting editorial tasks - from writing articles for major news organizations, to editing academic papers and translating commercial websites from German to English. I also help German companies reach English-speaking customers and clients.