I’m 44 and was born in Portsmouth. I’m from a working-class, market-trading family and was a first-generation undergraduate, gaining a classical music degree from the West Sussex Institute of Higher Education (now the University of Chichester). I gained a masters degree from Sussex University and completed a PhD at Salford University under the careful supervision of the late Professor Sheila Whiteley. My thesis was on the anarcho-punk scene of the 1980s and my forthcoming book, The Aesthetic of Our Anger: Anarcho-Punk, Politics and Music, is a co-edited volume on this topic.
My hobbies intersect with my work. I love writing about popular culture and playing Bach on the piano. I also support Portsmouth FC and go to Fratton Park as much as I can.
I am the co-founder of the Punk Scholars Network, a group that brings together an international array of writers, musicians and academics interested in the punk scene. The group has organised academic conferences, exhibitions and student-led symposiums. I currently work at the Institute of Contemporary Music in London, where I am programme leader for the BMus (Hons) in popular music performance. The role allows me to balance my continuing passion for classical piano and my academic writing. Being around students can be inspiring and they help me keep up to date with music.
My wife, Sam, and I subscribe to the Saturday Guardian and Observer. Whereas Sam reads both from start to finish, I start with opinion and letters. I find the writers balanced and intelligent. I then skip to Tim Dowling who discusses issues including lost shopping lists and his recent crisis when opening the fridge. Then it’s on to the Review.
A recent article that caught my eye was Paul MacInnes’s interview with Wango Riley, whose presence at Glastonbury this year highlighted the 30th anniversary of the Battle of the Beanfield, an incident where the police brutally attacked a group of so-called new age travellers at Stonehenge in the 1980s.
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