About

I am a writer and filmmaker. My writing draws on a varied creative life spent observing human character across starkly different worlds. After beginning my career in photography, I joined a film production company in Soho, worked in advertising, and then founded the independent production company Acorn Films.

A lifelong advocate for storytelling and craft, I founded The Original Writers in 2006, nurturing a dynamic international community of emerging and established writers.

Alongside coaching competitive fencing for UCL, I am completing a Master’s in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London.

The Original Writers Group

Founder & Facilitator (2006 – Present)

In 2006, I founded and developed The Original Writers Group, a workshop and writing community that hosts regular craft sessions, peer critiques, and collaborative events.

We have helped hundreds of emerging writers across short fiction, memoirs, screenplays, and poetry, from early drafts to publication, and have fostered a culture centred on constructive peer critique, structural storytelling discipline, and generative writing routines.

Broadcast & Documentary

Acorn Films, focusing on films for business

In 1994, I founded Acorn Films, overseeing narrative structure, script editing, and multi-disciplinary creative projects from conception to completion. As well as working with companies like Sotheby’s, Microsoft, and others, I have also produced creative film projects in UK maximum-security prisons, exploring rehabilitation, personal narratives, and the lives of marginalised individuals under intense institutional pressure.

Acorn Films Limited was officially dissolved at Companies House on October 8, 2024.

Japanese Broadcast Documentaries

In 1990, I wrote and produced two short-form documentaries for Asahi TV, Tokyo, navigating cross-cultural narratives, extensive on-the-ground research, and character-driven interviews across Tokyo and the UK.

Stage Collaborations

Royal Opera House

In 2004 I designed large-scale video projections for operatic productions, including the Olivier Award–winning stage work The Tempest by English composer Thomas Adès, with an English libretto by Meredith Oakes, based on William Shakespeare’s play. The world premiere was held to critical acclaim at the Royal Opera House in London on 10 February 2004 and the opera received the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera.

Writing Projects

1983 – Letters from a Cowboy — BBC Radio 4

A narrative documentary project originating from a rare archive of 19th-century letters written by my great-grandfather, William Hugh Cooke. In 1883, as a nineteen-year-old English gentleman, he emigrated to the American West to work as a cattle hand and rancher across Wyoming during the height of the frontier boom.

Commissioned by the BBC, I wrote and presented the radio documentary Letters from a Cowboy, bringing these firsthand accounts of gruelling roundups, physical endurance, and frontier life to the airwaves. Broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and featured on Pick of the Week, the broadcast laid the foundation for The Tenderfoot Project, which later expanded into an on-location documentary featuring interviews with contemporary ranchers in 1992. Click here for more information.

1988 – Winner 10th Study tour of Japan

In 1988, I was selected as one of fifty winners across the European Community in an essay competition organised by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The award – a two-week study tour of Japan exploring its politics, economics, and culture – was part of a cultural exchange initiative founded by former Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda following his 1978 visit to Europe.