writer & coach
"Tell me, what it is you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
I've spent much of my working life navigating this beautiful and important question, whether as a journalist interviewing public figures, or a travel author literally crossing oceans in a thinly-veiled search for answers of my own.
"Tell me, what it is you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
I've spent much of my working life navigating this beautiful and important question, whether as a journalist interviewing public figures, or a travel author literally crossing oceans in a thinly-veiled search for answers of my own.
In midlife - the subject of my six-month live online course Second Wind - I've noticed the question if anything becomes more urgent, particularly if we've been using other people's maps and no longer feel sure of our destination - though part of the answer paradoxically involves the lost art of letting go, as I discovered in my most recent book Urban Worrier.
Either way it's a journey that's better shared. As a life and leadership coach and trainer, I'm privileged to have accompanied hundreds of fellow-travellers on their own voyages of discovery - with the help of some recurring navigation aids I've picked up along the way. A particular specialism is midlife transition, along with creative process and male rite of passage.
Feel free to browse my coaching pages for more information, testimonials, or to arrange a free consultation call. You can also find my books, articles and blogs, listen to my TEDx talk on meaningful risk, or check me out on Substack.
Urban Worrier
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Hunched exhausted at his computer one ordinary Monday morning, world-class workaholic Nick Thorpe has reached the end of his tether. Ditching his self-help books, he makes a bold resolution: he will spend a year learning to let go.
From a school where pupils make the rules, to clowning, wing-walking, clowning and a revealing weekend at a naturist convention, Urban Worrier charts a humorous and often moving quest for the ultimate modern grail: how to find balance and fulfilment in today’s high-speed world.
Adrift in Caledonia
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ONE clear morning in May, Nick Thorpe left his Edinburgh flat, ducked off the commuter route and hitched a ride aboard a little white canal boat, heading west towards the sea...
It was the first mutinous step in a delightful boat-hopping odyssey that would take him 2,500 miles through Scotland’s canals, lochs and coastal waters, from the industrial Clyde to the scattered islands of Viking Shetland.
Eight Men and a Duck
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ON A fateful South American bus trip, journalist Nick Thorpe overheard an improbable plan: to sail 2,500 miles to Easter Island on a boat made of reeds. Intrigued by this modern-day Kon-Tiki, he blagged his way on board only to find himself with nagging questions.
Eight Men and a Duck charts this most eccentric of Pacific voyages as it lurched between high drama and high farce...