I created Tracks of the Minotaur as a home for my writing about Crete: its history, landscape, people and the routes that connect them.

I was born in Bridlington and raised in Crystal Palace, South London. I left school at fourteen and joined the British Army at fifteen, serving in the Infantry for twenty-six years reaching the rank of Warrant Officer. My service took me to Northern Ireland, Germany, Canada, Kenya, Rhodesia, Berlin, Greenland and Norway, and gave me a lasting interest in terrain, movement, military operations and the relationship between events on paper and what actually happens on the ground.

Leaving school at fourteen did not mean the end of my education. Much of what followed was self-directed, and reading became a constant part of my life. My lifelong interest in history began with Herodotus’ Histories, and from there I read widely and continuously. My father encouraged that habit by expecting me to read a book each week and the daily newspaper, with a dictionary beside me for words I did not understand. It was an unconventional education, but an enduring one. Over the years, reading became more than an interest: it taught me to compare accounts, question assertions, follow evidence and recognise the difference between what is known, what is inferred and what is simply repeated. That habit continued throughout my military service and subsequently became fundamental to my professional work and historical research.

After leaving the Army, I worked in social work, specialising in fostering and adoption, before moving into housing and tenancy management. I later became Head of Community Safety and subsequently worked as a crime scientist, specialising in problem-solving, business crime reduction, data integrity and public ethics. I also taught critical thinking, evidence-based problem-solving and the importance of testing assumptions against reliable evidence.

That background has shaped the way I approach historical research. I am interested not only in what has been written, but in what can still be tested on the ground: the position of a track, the location of a cave, the remains of a building, the view from a ridge, or the distance between two points recorded in an operational report. Where the evidence does not support an established account, I believe that should be said clearly.

I now live permanently in Crete with my wife, Irene, in the shadow of the White Mountains. Much of my fieldwork is carried out by electric mountain bike. Riding allows me to reach places that are often missed when travelling by road and to examine how terrain influenced movement, settlement, military operations and everyday life.

The journeys recorded here are based on real routes, direct observation and repeated visits. They are not simply accounts of bicycle rides. The ride is often the means by which an investigation begins: following an old track, locating a wartime position, examining a memorial, returning to a cave, speaking to local people, or comparing what survives in the landscape with maps, photographs and contemporary records.

My principal historical interests include the Battle of Crete, the Cretan resistance, the Special Operations Executive, Force 133, military history and the local history of Apokoronas and western Crete. I also research and write about churches, memorials, old tracks, abandoned structures and the ordinary features of the Cretan landscape that reveal how people once lived, worked and moved through it.

Wherever possible, I work from primary sources, contemporary records, maps and photographs, supported by evidence found in the landscape itself. Oral history also has an important place in that process. Local knowledge can preserve details that were never formally recorded, but I try to distinguish clearly between documented fact, informed interpretation and local tradition.

I also lead battlefield tours in Crete for veterans, serving military units and others with an interest in the island’s wartime history. Taking people onto the ground reinforces one of the principles behind this website: terrain matters. A map or operational report can tell us where something happened; standing in the actual landscape can help explain why.

My work on the Battle of Crete has also developed into a particular specialism in Suda Bay War Cemetery. I regularly conduct battlefield and cemetery tours there, using the cemetery not simply as a place of remembrance but as a starting point for examining the wider campaign and the individual stories of those buried within it.

A significant part of my research is devoted to identifying and reconstructing the lives, service and final actions of individual men at rest in the cemetery. These investigations draw on Commonwealth War Graves Commission records, service documents, war diaries, operational reports, archival material, family history, contemporary newspapers and field research. Where possible, I also return to the ground associated with a casualty’s death in order to test the documentary record against the landscape and to place the individual back into the circumstances in which he served and died.

I am currently writing Between Sea and Sky – History, Myth, and Memory in Crete, which brings together E-MTB journeys, Cretan history, wartime research, myth and personal narrative.

Tracks of the Minotaur is where those journeys and investigations are brought together. It will continue to develop as new routes are ridden, new evidence is found, old assumptions are tested and familiar places are examined again.