I was born on the Isle of Man, where historically the Celtic and Norse worlds met, and I’ve always been fascinated by language; both my own native English and others. And at the age of 12, my German teacher told me I had “Sprachgefühl”: a feeling for languages.

But my academic career took a different direction and I went on to study archaeology at degree and postgraduate level, with the intention of working in museums. However, the recession of the 1990s led to me then working in the IT industry for several years.

In 2003 I moved to central France, where I quickly became fluent in French and discovered another talent, this time for selling houses. A few years later I moved to Sweden, and in 2009 I realised that my seemingly erratic career path had in fact been leading up to my dream job – as a professional freelance translator.​