What topics do you like to discuss?
What do I like to discuss?
I’m a polymath by inclination and by training. My academic path alone zigzags across disciplines: Geography and the Environment at University of Oxford, British History and the First World War via Wolverhampton and Birmingham, Open and Distance Education—with a focus on Creativity, Innovation and Change—at The Open University, and creative training at the School of Communication Arts London. That combination never funnels into a single subject—it multiplies them.
So what do I talk about?
I talk about landscapes—both physical and human. Ancient woodland, veteran trees, river systems, climate systems, and the fragile edges where they meet human decision-making. My work surveying and protecting ancient trees feeds directly into this: I’m as comfortable discussing fungal associations and girth measurements as I am policy frameworks and planning law.
I talk about history, particularly the First World War—not as distant chronology, but as lived experience. I’ve given talks on British Caribbean soldiers, and I’m always drawn to the human stories beneath the grand narrative: identity, empire, memory, and how we choose to remember.
I talk about storytelling in all its forms. Years in television and film production taught me how narrative works—how to shape attention, emotion, and meaning. That carries through into everything I do now: writing, blogging, visual work, even coaching. Whether it’s a short film, a blog post, or a memory from 1978, I’m interested in how raw material becomes story.
I talk about learning—how we learn, why we stop learning, and how to re-engage curiosity. My work in open and distance education sharpened that lens. I’m interested in intrinsic motivation, in the difference between institutional learning and self-directed discovery, and in how creativity sits at the centre of both.
I talk about the body as well as the mind. As a swimming coach, I spend hours each week thinking about movement, efficiency, rhythm, and performance. Stroke mechanics, pacing, psychology under pressure—these are as intellectually engaging to me as any academic subject. There’s something deeply satisfying about translating abstract principles into physical improvement.
I talk about creativity—drawing, printmaking, visualisation. I’m fascinated by how observation becomes interpretation, whether I’m sketching a tree, composing an image, or building a scene from memory.
And I read constantly, which means I talk about what I read. Fiction and non-fiction, historical novels, science fiction, neuroscience, ADHD, gut science, environmental writing. Authors like Vladimir Nabokov remind me that memory itself is an art form—that what we attend to, we deepen.
I also talk about place. I adore France, love Barcelona, and have my eye on Venice next. Travel, for me, isn’t escape—it’s another layer of observation. Food, language, architecture, rhythm of life: all of it feeds back into how I see the world.
And then there’s conversation itself.
At a dinner party, I’m rarely the one dominating the table. I listen. I ask questions. But I can move across topics quickly—linking ideas, drawing connections, offering perspective when it’s useful. That, perhaps, is the thread that runs through everything: not expertise in a single domain, but the ability to connect domains.
If there’s a unifying principle, it’s curiosity.
I’m interested in how things work—systems, stories, people, environments—and how they connect. Once you start seeing those connections, it becomes very hard to stay in just one lane.
And frankly, I wouldn’t want to.
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