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 (which gradually evolved into the South East Rivers Trust) from 2008 to 2021, I spent many years deeply involved in starting to restore the river to its historic status as a world-famous chalkstream fishery.
All that time spent pulling out shopping trolleys, rallying the local community and working with a world-class group of volunteers and staff to mend that little urban river was truly one of the greatest privileges of my life. From around 2001 onwards, our grassroots community project grew all the way up to full Rivers Trust status, and it even inspired the Wild Trout Trust to establish a national Trout in the Town programme with the Wandle as its flagship initiative.
After moving from south London to Somerset, 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, besides editing the charity’s regular newsletters and its prestigious annual journal Salmo Trutta.
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.
My latest book River Trout Streamer Fishing has just been published by Coch-y-Bonddu Books in November 2025.
Elsewhere I’ve previously 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.
