For more than half my life I have scratched a rewarding (if rather uneven) living as a woodworker and a designer. I’ve made all manner of things from all manner of materials, though mostly hardwood, and though I have no formal training, along the way I am lucky enough to have worked with some of the world’s biggest brands on some truly remarkable projects. For me, making things has always been far more than just a job. It’s in the blood. Something I learned from my father, and something I share with my wife. A powerful and thoroughly ingrained creative obsession.

Quietly though, as anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of an email from me will know all too well, I have always nurtured a passion for the written word. A love of storytelling, language, and the world of the imagination that found its roots, as so many do, in the fertile soil of an isolated rural upbringing, and something that’s grown and grown, despite being kept in the shadows (and liberally sprinkled with sawdust). Writing was something I always meant to get around to seriously, but could never quite find the time to start. Until one bright spring morning I decided to put that right. Setting up shop in our tiny woodshed - the woodshed where my wife and I once lived for almost a year while we built the wooden cabin we now call home - I made a start. Green as I was, I thought if I could put in the hours, and if I could bring the same care and attention to detail to the words on the page that I have always tried to do with the timber on my bench, then maybe I could set down something worth reading.

I’m privileged to have had the chance to write about craft, the outdoors and travel for a variety of publications, and I am delighted that a memoir detailing my unorthodox creative education will be published in 2024 by Doubleday in the U.K, and Ecco in the U.S.A