I was born in London in July 1933. I attended Aldenham School in Hertfordshire before going up to Magdalene College Cambridge in 1954. My professional training took place at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.
I spent 25 years practicing and teaching architecture, before taking early retirement. After a divorce in my mid-fifties I studied architectural computing and artificial intelligence at Strathclyde University in Glasgow. My doctorate was awarded in 1990.
I have been involved with the sea and a variety of sailing boats ever since I was at school. In the 1960s I twice sailed a small engineless sloop across the North Atlantic. In middle life my wife and I took our two children sailing at most weekends and on summer holidays every year.
In 1998 I retired to a boat, and in 2001 I embarked on a circumnavigation on board the 25 foot Harrier of Down. But not just any world cruise. I followed the track of the voyage made by HMS Beagle in the 1830s with Robert FitzRoy and Charles Darwin on board. Mine was the first re creation in detail of this famous voyage. My recently published Kindle book, Voyage of the Harrier, is an account of both my own voyage and that of the Beagle.
In October 2015 Harrier of Down was lost in a towing accident in the North Sea. I now live aboard a Hunter Horizon 26 sailing boat, Zephyrus.