A Shropshire lad by upbringing, I developed a love of foreign languages at secondary school and studied French and German (and Occitan troubadour poetry) at Cambridge.

Then I got sidetracked by an interest in ecology and farming inspired by a year's work on a north German organic farm. That led to a summer making cheese at 2,000 metres, a Master's in Sustainable Agriculture, and a job building, promoting and certifying Fairtrade supply chains (coffee, tea, cocoa, cotton) for the French market while living in Paris.

After nine fascinating years, it was time to do more reading - so I became a translator from French and German into English.

Along with some twenty assorted fiction and non-fiction translations, as well as extracts and short pieces published in reviews (Two Lines, Asymptote) and collections, I have also subtitled feature films (Leos Carax, Albert Dupontel) and documentaries, worked for museums and specialised in translating newspaper investigations of tax evasion and money laundering, most notably as part of the team that worked on the English version of Bastian Obermayer and Frederick Obermaier's "The Panama Papers".

I live in the Alpine foothills between two lakes east of Zurich.

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Awards

–– Pro Helvetia grant for the forthcoming translation, with Chantal Wright, of the correspondence between Ingeborg Bachmann and Max Frisch, "Wir haben es nicht gut gemacht. Der Briefwechsel".

–– Canton of Zurich "Werkbeitrag" grant for my new translation of Thomas Mann's novel "The Magic Mountain" (Oxford World's Classics)

–– Pro Helvetia grant for my new translation of "The Magic Mountain" by Thomas Mann

–– Shortlisted for the 2022 Schlegel-Tieck Prize for the best translation from the German for "Troubled Water" by Jens Mühling

–– Runner-up for the 2021 Schlegel-Tieck Prize for the best translation from the German (for "Cox or The Course of Time" by Christoph Ransmayr)

— Shortlisted for the 2019 Schlegel-Tieck Prize for the best translation from the German (for "The Flying Mountain")

— Winner of the 2018 Straelen Most Promising Translator Prize
(for "The Flying Mountain" by Christoph Ransmayr)

— Longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize (for "The Flying Mountain")

— Shortlisted for the 2018 Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature (for "The Flying Mountain")

— Special commendation in the 2013 Ernst Jünger Translation Competition
(University of Bristol, School of Modern Languages)