I am one of the three co-founders of Unbound. I'm also a writer for QI, responsible with my friend and mentor John Lloyd for all five of the QI books. Before that I was a publisher, the MD of Cassell & Co and before that the MD of Harvill Press. I've published a smorgasbord of literary succulence in my time, from Michael Palin and The Beatles, to Richard Ford, Alan Garner, Haruki Murakami and a book about knitting with dog hair. Go further back and you'll find I was Waterstone's first marketing director. I guess that makes me a gamekeeper turned poacher turned game. Or just someone with a low boredom threshold.

I live in a old book-filled farmhouse in the village of Great Tew in Oxfordshire. In my spare time I keep pigs and chickens, which I like to turn into various cured, smoked and spiced delicacies. At present, I also have two flat-packed hives waiting to be built and filled with bees.