After military service and studies at Oxford and the Sorbonne, I worked in Ibiza and back in Oxford before moving to New York as a translator at United Nations headquarters, followed by five years with the UN in Bangkok as translator, editor and interpreter. I later joined WHO in Geneva, where I spent many years in editing and publishing before working as a free-lance editor and writer in France. I now live in Frome (Somerset), with strong interests in music, sketching and pottery, poetry and natural history.