About me

I have made a living from writing — journalism and marketing — for decades.

I’ve loved reading, writing and telling stories for as long as I can remember. Journalism, teaching, writing novels or public speaking, the art of effective communication and connecting with people has enabled me to express my abiding passions of politics, democracy and twentieth century European history.

History warns us about what’s happening today. We can best understand the present only by understanding the past. The novelist and philosopher George Santayana sums it up well: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

My passion for history and story-telling combines in several ways: writing novels and giving lectures. The ever-present threat of tyranny underpins my lectures about democracy and Germany between the world wars. My first novel is a thriller set in Germany in the early 1930s. You can get the first three chapters, free, here. It’s the story of three men, their personal struggles and their battle to undermine tyranny.

I love reading – especially novels and non-fiction in the inter-world-war period – the theatre, movies and the card game Bridge. I work and live with my partner in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia’s only island state.