Travel writer, novelist, editor

A writer of travel guides and features since 1977, I have written hundreds of travel articles for a wide variety of UK publications, including most British national newspapers, and am the author of forty popular travel books and guides, as well as editing, co-authoring or contributing to many others. Some of my articles have gained prestigious travel journalism awards.

Always freelance, I have extensive experience of UK national newspapers, consumer magazines, websites, guidebook writing and travel publishing. Since 2015, I have devoted my time mainly to fiction, with three novels in print and fourth which I am now writing. I continue occasionally to update print and online destination guides, and I write a small number of commissioned travel features each year.

I was editor-in-chief of the French Railways’ travel quarterly, Top Rail (later relaunched as Rail Europe Magazine), from 1990 to 1999. In addition, I have at different times worked on contract as consultant travel editor of several magazines, including BBC Vegetarian, Ford Magazine, Vegetarian Living and insurance customer magazine Foresight. More recently I have edited magazines voluntarily for charitable or communal organisations.

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My first guidebook was the first edition of the Rough Guide to France, co-authored with Kate Baillie and Tim Salmon, published in 1986. My most recent is the new edition of DK Eyewitness Top 10 Dublin, co-authored with Polly Phillimore in 2018. My most recent (and probably final) sole author travel guides are pocket guides to the Normandy Coast and Rouen and Upper Normandy (both published by Footprint in  2013), and a more substantial touring guide to Normandy (Footprint, 2010).

While most of my travel books were commissioned as part of various popular guidebook series, I also originated one-off travel titles. The most successful of these were The Vegetarian Traveller (Thorsons, 1987; Grafton, 1991), selling over 4000 copies in one week, and Exploring Rural France (Helm, 1988; A&C Black, 1990, 1993).

In addition to writing, I have worked for major guidebook publishers as a pre- and post-commissioning guidebook consultant and project manager, including AA Publishing, Michelin Green Guides, Thomas Cook, Dorling Kindersley and A&C Black. I created and launched guidebook series for Simon & Schuster (Footloose Guides) and for Christopher Helm (Exploring Rural series), and remained as series editor of both during their lifetime.

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I have lived and worked in several countries, including Greece (Corfu), Tunisia (Djerba), India (Goa and Baroda) and America (California). In particular, I have had a lifelong involvement with France, where I lived and worked for several years in the Languedoc region. I have also been a frequent visitor to Israel, where my parents used to live.

I travelled widely throughout the world during the course of my work, visiting many parts of the US and Canada, South America and the Caribbean, most of Europe and North Africa, and Australia and SE Asia. I continue to travel frequently, usually around Europe and the Mediterranean.

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In addition to guidebooks and travel features, my other writing includes fiction, to which I devote most of my time. 

My most recent novel, Love, published in 2015, is about the intoxicating atmosphere of the late 1960s and early 1970s, told as the passionate but unhappy love story of an English boy and American girl – two hippies – who meet in California and part in India three years later. The book explores idealism and disillusion, memory and identity, and perceptions of the passage of time.

My previous novel, The Slave, published in 2013, is about a young loner who sets out to free a trafficked woman from forced prostitution. Getting deeply into danger and difficulty, he calls on a respectable, law-abiding older neighbour for help, presenting him with an impossible moral dilemma.

My first novel, The J-Word, first published in 2009 (released in the US in 2010), second edition published in 2018, has been widely praised, and featured at two literary festivals. Exploring questions of religious and secular identity, the book is about an antisemitic attack on an 80-year-old man who long ago ceased to think of himself as Jewish. With the aid of his 10-year-old grandson he sets out to get justice – in his own unorthodox way.