At the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, I was trained as a copy-editor and was Book Reviews Editor, then Editor-in-chief, of Chatham House’s foreign policy journal. On a visit to the city of Istanbul on holiday, I was so impressed by the directness and simplicity of the great Ottoman mosques I saw there that I went to live in Cairo, Egypt, to study Islamic architecture. I wrote a thesis on the history of a main street in medieval Cairo.
I am a communicator, and I love to present ideas from one culture to new audiences in another. Now that I’ve lived so long outside my native London, first in the Middle East and now in Scandinavia, I have got used to looking into a culture from the outside, then stepping inside it and looking back at my own—and juggling the two.
I still care very much about ideas—which is perhaps why I’m a good editor. I’m currently studying English literature again, while I practise my cold-water swimming through the cold Danish year.