About Me

I was born in Rugby, England and educated at Eton College and Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. At Cambridge I was heavily involved in party politics, serving for a term as Chairman of the Cambridge Tory Reform Group. This connection enabled me to work at Parliament during a summer vacation as a research assistant to the House of Commons Select Committee on Energy.

After graduating with BA Hons Geography I joined Metal Box as a management trainee and worked in Aintree, Liverpool for 18 months during one of the most turbulent times in British industrial history - the early days of the Thatcher revolution. The highlight for me was working as a volunteer for the Tory election campaign of 1983 when we unseated Shirley Williams as the Social Democratic MP for Crosby.

In January 1984 I joined an overland expedition from London to Nairobi, Kenya. Arriving in Johannesburg in September, I have lived in South Africa ever since (apart 2002-2004 which I spent mainly in the USA). My career has included spells in publishing, multimedia communications, marketing, e-commerce, property sales, product distribution and event management. I joined Adele Lucas Promotions in 2005 as Sales Director and was appointed Managing Director in 2010 after the sudden death of founder, Adele Lucas.

In May 2014 I was elected Member of Parliament for the Democratic Alliance and in June 2014 appointed Shadow Minister of Small Business Development. I held these positions until the election in May 2019 when I returned to the private sector.

I live in Johannesburg and am married to Diana Lucas, an award-winning TV producer and director, well known for her 30-year contribution to the weekly Carte Blanche actually programme.



Lighthouses attempts to fill the gap in lighthouse history concerning the development of illumination technology during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The main characters are James Chance, who started the lighthouse department at the firm founded by his uncle Lucas Chance in 1822; and Sir David Brewster, a radical Scottish optical scientist whose entreaties to the British establishment to take the lighthouse question seriously from the 1820s were largely ignored until a Royal Commission on...read more
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