I started exploring France in the mid-1950s - prompted first by my enthusiasm for motoring, maps and rally navigation and, later, by a keen and growing interest in food, wine, history and other aspects of French culture. I became a self-taught DIY publisher in 1980 when, after being offered a derisory contract by a famous publishing house, I chose instead to go-it-alone.

To survive against the publishing giant of Michelin (and others) I have always known that my work would have to be exceptionally subjective and idiosyncratic - to the point of eccentricity. I have allowed my personal interests, emotions and prejudices, fallible as they undoubtedly are, to dominate my writing. A ‘mapaholic’ to my readers, I once described my over-riding objective as ‘filling in the mortar between the Bibendum bricks’.

As a DIY author and publisher I have survived 20 years of financial gambles in publishing each of my 19 guides. Unlike some recent, more famous self-publishing authors I have never ‘enjoyed’ the safety net of private means, an income from any other source or inherited capital. What I have relished for over 25 years, since I resigned from a multi-national American computer corporation to work for myself, is the priceless privilege of total independence of both mind and time and the exhilarating satisfaction of not having to sell my soul to anyone.