I was born in New York City, which I used to think was impressive, when I was a kid. I would tell people another infant gang had forced me out over a nappy-racket dispute: although I may have been born there, you see – and have the passport – we left when I was very young, in the mid-70s, for Australia. I grew up in Australia; most of my formative experiences took place there – specifically, in Sydney. Puberty Blues, the ousting of Gough Whitlam, meat poise (sic) – such things comprised my childhood. From Sydney we moved, in my early teens, to Perth: a highly contrastive experience and, for me, somewhat traumatic. I did my undergraduate degree there and, as soon as I had done so, left, for Melbourne. There I did a Masters – on the employer-friendly subject of psychoanalytic social theory – began contributing to newspapers and broadcasting and wrote speeches for two of the premiers of the state. I had been going down the academic route – and I still value hardcore thought highly – but somehow the media seduced me: perhaps it was the prospect of being read by several hundred thousand people rather than simply several. Finally, in my late-20s, I left Australia, for London (it might as well be a country), where I have been living for the past 10 years. I began here doing more or less the same thing: writing for newspapers and magazines I admire, travelling (and writing about it) plus various kinds of editing. As a culmination of all this activity, four years or so ago I became the editor of MSN Travel (the most visited travel website in the UK, don’t you know; what’s that trumpet sound?). But something else has been growing more and more strongly within me: an interest in photography. Perhaps I will give it all up and become a photographer, although it is the ‘literary’ quality of photographs that most appeals to me about them.