About
I'm an independent political analyst and writer working on the Middle East, the Gulf, and energy. For twenty years I was the analytical and writing resource behind a private advisory practice whose counsel reached foreign ministers and senior figures across the Arab world, Europe, and the US — tracking events, forming judgments, and producing the analysis, reports, and long-form writing the work depended on.
International relations at the LSE came first, then a journalist's training — at the International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, and Agence France-Presse — before a masters at Sciences Po focused on the Middle East, with Arabic study in Damascus and Beirut. The combination shaped how I work: the reporter's discipline of getting it right and to deadline, the analyst's habit of reading ambiguous situations clearly, and a writer's concern for how judgment reads on the page.
Focal Point is the consultancy I founded in France in 2007 and run today. The practice runs end to end, from research and source monitoring through analysis, writing, and editing.
AI is now part of how that work gets done — research, analysis, and knowledge management — and I build the agentic workflows my own practice depends on. The discipline is unchanged — an aid to research and synthesis, never a substitute for judgment, and grounded in verified sourcing. I am developing that experience into advisory work for organisations putting the same tools to use in research-intensive environments.
Home is the Brittany coast, where I programme Jazz Ô Château, a small festival that mixes established names with emerging talent. Music, photography, and travel run alongside the writing — the same close attention, turned away from the page.