At some point in my writing career I wanted to explore that part of my identity that had been largely hidden when I was a child: my German-Jewish background on my mother's side, and I believed that longer-form prose was the best approach.

So I began working on my novel that explores my late mother's family history, Five Amber Beads, in 2001 (Flambard, Newcastle, 2006) and, later, its sister book An American Decade (2017). Since then I have written both poetry and prose.

Alongside twentieth-century history, the other key theme that runs through much of my writing - particularly apparent in my forthcoming novel Night Comes Down (Guernica Editions, Toronto, 2025) - is the natural world and man's impact on it.

I grew up in rural Gloucestershire surrounded by nature and the natural world still sustains me.