How I started
For many years I worked with people who wrote words for a living, as an editor at Penguin Books.
Paris and beyond
Then in 2011 I left Penguin to go to Paris and see if I could get my small, part-French son to speak French.
After returning with my now bilingual boy in hand, I did everything from compiling an anthology of love poems, to working with Alain de Botton’s School of Life, to teaching at Brighton, Brunel, and beyond.
Writing
I also worked with people who weren’t writers and didn’t want to be writers, but had to write things.
It made me think a lot about how what you write can make the difference between keeping a client or losing one, and between getting the go-ahead for a project or seeing it fade to nothing.
Architecture
Meanwhile, I was becoming more and more interested in the ways and workings of architecture. I loved the process of working with architects on my own house. And when my dark, cold and slightly dysfunctional 1930s semi got turned into a thing of light, space and beauty I loved the process even more.
I certainly wasn’t about to retrain. But I was about to decide that here was a profession I could work alongside, while sensibly sticking to what I do best.