May you live in interesting times is often said to be a Chinese curse. Is it really? Anyway, a much more terrible curse would be, may you meet interesting people. I meet interesting people all the time and that is….. interesting. But the effect of the curse is that these meetings remind me of how dull my own life has been. Neverthless, web sites must have “biogs”, so here is an edited version of mine.
Born Manchester. Educated Bolton School and King’s College. Cambridge. Degree in English. At The Times as Financial News Editor and Deputy Arts Editor from 1976 to 1984. Freelance journalist ever since. Three times won Feature Writer of the Year and twice commended in the British Press Awards. Have contributed to, among others, Times, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Spectator, Times Literary Supplement, The Tablet, New York Times, Vanity Fair etc. I am currently a special feature writer, commentator, reviewer and columnist for The Sunday Times.
My books are: The Culture Club: Crisis in the Arts, Richard Rogers: a biography, The Pleasures of Peace: Art and Imagination in Postwar Britain, Understanding the Present: Science and the Soul of Modern Man, The First Church of the New Millennium: a novel, Brave New Worlds: Genetics and the Human Experience (winner of a medical writing prize whose name I cannot remember); Aliens: Why They Are Here. I am just finishing a book on immortality called, provisionally and unamazingly, Immortality.
I have lectured, debated or taught numerous universities, including Boston, St Andrews, Glasgow, Leeds, Cambridge, Oxford, Trinity College, Dublin, London, Liverpool John Moores, Architectural Association, Glasgow School of Architecture and I have been a fellow of the World Economic Forum. I have done much television, usually with disastrous consequences, and I do lots of radio, which I like though I am told it makes me sound at least 30 years older than I actually am.