Observation and argument
I write about the subjects that affect ordinary lives but are too often explained in the language of institutions.
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Why AuthorsDrop deliberately keeps generative AI out of the writing process, protects the author’s voice and leaves every creative decision with the person whose name appears on the cover.
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A practical account of replacing scattered documents, notes and competing versions with one organised writing workspace.
My opinion writing has examined healthcare waiting times, frozen British pensions, employment insurance, education policy, mobile telephone providers and the gap between what governments promise and what public systems actually deliver.
Why universal healthcare must mean timely access to treatment, and why defending it requires questioning how it works.
Read the essayThe unfairness of freezing British state pensions according to where pensioners live after retirement.
Read the essayI am interested in how technology changes the way we learn, create and judge one another. That includes AI in university education, but also the less technical question of whether culture, religion or habit changes what makes a room laugh.
Travel writing is partly about where to go, but the useful part begins with how a place asks us to behave. I write about etiquette, craft, food, history, overlooked places and the surprises that survive an itinerary.
How journeys through London, Japan, Finland, Italy and Egypt have enlarged my life through memory, attention, calm, pleasure and perspective.
Read the essayThese pieces begin with personal experience and then refuse to remain there. Retirement, mortality, comedy, watches, writing software and the peculiar consequences of being alive are all allowed into the room.
Good opinion writing should risk an opinion. Otherwise it is merely furniture arranged into paragraphs.