Author & Independent Researcher
Has taught Biography to MA students at the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters (UCL) and at the University of Buckingham, and a course on 'The Art of the Essay' at The Idler Academy. Also works as an expert consultant to the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, Human Rights Watch and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
Research expertise
Historical biographies (Sarah Churchill, the members of the Kit-Kat club); currently working on a book about the characters who surrounded King James I after 1614.
Contributions
People
Practices
Kit-Cat Club
The Kit-Cat Club (c.1690s-c.1720) was one of the earliest and most influential London gentlemen’s dining clubs. It kickstarted the English craze for eighteenth century clubbing and was the first to turn membership into a social credential. With members drawn exclusively from one Whig faction, yet with foundations in the literary world, it became a hub of patronage along lines of intellectual friendship rather than kinship, an informal venue of political opposition, and a prototype for Dr Johnson’s Club, among many others.