1.Talk us through your career trajectory. You’ve been a parliamentary assistant, advertising researcher, London tour guide. How does all of that connect?
It doesn’t! My career happened that way because of a combination of diverse interests, misplaced energy, and a general lassitude. I also spent a decade in advertising, worked as a teaching assistant, went to law school… it was a whole mess. Many of those domains are still reflected as my interests on The Common Reader, of course. Obviously there’s a strong aesthetic thread through all of this, and a love of history and philosophy, but essentially I have been, and still am, quite a diffuse, or generalist, person.
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