My photographic career began when I was working as an arts journalist for the Sunday Times, Guardian and Daily Telegraph. Assignments abroad often made it too expensive for the newspapers to pay to send a photographer as well as a writer. So I started taking my own pics of Brazilian pop musicians and South Korean dancers, and found I was almost more excited to see these photographs appear in print than the laboriously crafted prose that accompanied them.Â
Later, as a columnist and author in rural France, my camera helped me to document my new life and landscape. I wrote three bestselling books - C'est La Folie, Je t'aime à La Folie and Gardens of Stone - all of which contain some of my images. And, more recently, as a teacher at one of Britain's top prep schools - Windlesham House - and then as a resident at Eton College, arguably the most famous school in the world, it felt natural to do what I could to record the many magic moments and memories that are created amid the buzz of a distinguished school roaring along at full gas.Â
Besides photography and music, my passions include road cycling, vintage aviation and virtual studio technology. I am currently co-authoring a book related to World War I, and writing a larky memoir about my midlife cycle career, and my attempt to hold back time by striving to beat the French at their national sport, despite always having been chosen last when two captains were told to pick teams at school.