About me
I’m a published author, freelance copywriter, urban fly-fisher and river restorationist, with lots of history on south London’s River Wandle and other urban rivers.
As the former Chairman of the Wandle Trust (now working more widely as the South East Rivers Trust) from 2008 to 2021, I spent many years getting deeply involved in starting to restore the river to its historic status as a world-famous chalkstream fishery. Since 2001 our little grassroots project has grown all the way up to full Rivers Trust status, and it’s even inspired the Wild Trout Trust to establish a national Trout in the Town programme with the Wandle as its flagship initiative.
Since April 2018 I’ve been working professionally with the Wild Trout Trust to develop even more Trout in the Town projects across the south of England and Wales, but before that I was fortunate enough to be honoured for voluntary work and environmental advocacy: first by being awarded the Wild Trout Trust’s Bernard Venables Award for services to wild trout conservation in 2008, and then with international recognition as a Sage Conservation Hero in 2009…
My first book Trout in Dirty Places: 50 rivers to fly-fish for trout and grayling in the UK’s town and city centres was published by Merlin Unwin Books in April 2012 (and you can find my Urbantrout continuity blog here).
On a similar theme of community empowerment and direct environmental action, my second book Pocket Guide to Balsam Bashing – and how to tackle other Invasive Non-Native Species is designed to help everyone in the UK and Ireland to start tackling alien threats to their local environment.
Elsewhere I’ve been privileged to contribute a chapter to Chalk Stream Fly Fishing: A 21st Century Anthology on wise water use, supranational law, ecosystem services and many other factors affecting the future of these globally-precious ecosystems.
I’ve also written several portraits of influential new media ambassadors and environmental movements for The Fly Fisher, a beautiful lifestyle coffee-table book published by Gestalten in March 2017.
And from 2013, I’ve served as Editor of the Flyfishers’ Journal, the biannual club magazine of the historic London-based Flyfishers’ Club.
If you’d like to talk to me about any aspect of my work, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
This page has the following sub pages.
