I attended the University of Liverpool, then somehow became an airline pilot. After a number of years discovering that it was actually hard work, I went into the family confectionery manufacturing company where I remained until 1990. The company had been sold to a large public company, and I decided to enter the world of academia. Following a Masters degree at the University of Hertfordshire I wrote a book based on my Masters subject the German invasion of the Channel Islands and the treachery of some of the islanders. The book on treachery and treason in the Channel Islands during WW2 is my favourite book. It asks a lot of uncomfortable questions. It is an exposure of Island collaboration and British government cover-up. I then did my PhD at the University of Hertfordshire which dealt with the change of German memory from World War II perpetrators to the present day, where the German media increasingly presents the German people as joint victims of the war. In light of Brexit I'm considering rewriting the thesis and turning it into a book !
In 2003 I purchased an ocean going yacht having worked out that the only sport you can take a bed and loo with you is the sport of sailing ! I then after 9 years plucking up the courage crossed the Atlantic in November 2012 in a 'race' from Las Palmas to Rodney Bay, St Lucia. It took only 19 days due to being propelled by awful weather! I then sailed up through the Caribbean and recrossed the Atlantic via Bermuda and the Azores arriving Portugal in May 2013 and England in June 2013. The following year I circumnavigated the Baltic visiting St Petersburg and Helsinki en-route. It was not a good trip with lots of bits dropping of the yacht and the Baltic winter beginning in August !
The latest book 'The Earls of Essex A tale of Noble Misfortune' took 7 years to write with lots of scandal about an aristocratic family, the Capells, and their journey through the last 900 years. The present Earl, Paul Capell helped me with the research into his family. It has been well received. I am now working on a book with Adrian Miles, Archaeologist at the Museum of London, on London's Crypts and Catacombs due out late summer 2018.
