Some people plot their career plan on a paper napkin at the age of 18. I’m not one of those. By turns, I’ve been a staffer and a freelance, in print and online, for magazines and newspapers (both tabloid and broadsheet) in the trade and consumer press. 

Long before all that, I left Swansea to start an English degree at Oxford in 1993. I stayed on for an MPhil in linguistics, then moved to Cardiff University to earn my journalism diploma. I went back to do further research into the history of the tabloid column. It’s an academic background that has proved invaluable in the work I now do for the university sector.

During a decade in London, I served as a sub-editor on three national newspapers and became deputy editor of Sunday Times Travel Magazine, the biggest-selling title in its sector. I went on to help run the editorial projects desk at Telegraph Media Group. All the while, I continued to freelance – mostly as a travel and ski journalist.

Since 2008, I have been back in Wales. I now live and work in the Vale of Glamorgan.