I am an award-winning writer and journalist who covers art, travel, history, design, and all aspects of culture. I am an experienced interviewer, particularly in the field of art. Among my interviewees are Howard Hodgkin, David Bailey, Christo, Tracey Emin, Tadao Ando, Paul Smith, Isaac Julien, Grayson Perry, Ian Davenport, Mary McCartney, Don McCullin, Iris Apfel, Will Alsop and Cornelia Parker. I studied Russian and German at university, and spent three years as a student in the USSR during the last decade of communist rule. I began my career in journalism as a feature writer for the Sunday Times Magazine, then went back to Russia as a correspondent in the Yeltsin years. I covered the battle for the Russian parliament building in Moscow in 1993, and reported on the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. I contributed to the foreign pages of The Sunday Times, as well as to The Scotsman, The Straits Times of Singapore and Time Out. I am a travel writer, and have written on destinations around the world for Condé Nast Traveller, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and many other publications. I was a contributing editor at Christie’s Magazine, where I wrote about art, artists and collecting. I continue to write stories for Christie’s global website. I am the author of many books in various genres. 'Voices From D-Day', a popular history of Operation Overlord, was followed by 'Voices From Stalingrad'. I have written books about Samuel Pepys’ London, British prime ministers, Britain between the wars, global myth and legend. In 2014 I curated, edited and co-wrote 'The 21st Century Novel' (Edinburgh University Press). I was a contributor to 'Going Once' (Phaidon, 2016), a history of Christie’s auction house in 250 objects. I have published one novel, 'Devil’s Acre', set in Moscow during the icy Brezhnev era.In 2022 I won the Stephen Spender Poetry Prize.