After leaving Oxford University with a 2.1 degree in English literature, I went to work for a local paper in India, covering the Kashmir conflict and India¹s response to the war on terrorism.

In August 2002, I was appointed Kuwait correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. I traveled extensively through Iran and the Gulf states covering the build up to the Iraq war, for which work I was a finalist for Young Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards, the UK equivalent of the Pulitzer prizes.

During the war I was an embedded journalist with the British army, winning a British Press Award for my coverage of the fall of Basra.

For two years I was the Daily Telegraph¹s Baghdad bureau chief, variously shot at, kidnapped and suicide car bombed following the story.

I left Iraq in March 2005, and am currently writing a book on my experiences called Love in Baghdad. I am a contributor to the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Magazine, Mother Jones, and live in Washington DC.