I'm currently working on a new book, due to be published in August 2015, that tells the extraordinary story of Willoughbyland, the forgotten seventeenth-century English colony in Suriname that was exchanged with the Dutch for New York. When not reading, writing or staring out of the window, I love making sushi, pubs, growing stuff and visiting remote places. I'm a member of the Authors Cricket Club, and wrote a chapter of A Season of English Cricket from Hackney to Hambledon. I am also a contributor to the forthcoming Oxford Companion to Sweets. I live in East London with my wife, three children and annoying dog.