Career
Born in Company Sligo, Ireland, he worked as a comics editor at Fleetway and later at Deadline magazine. He worked for a time at America Online before becoming a literary translator. He has translated many authors including Michel Houellebecq, Boualem Sansal, Frédéric Beigbeder and the late Ivoirian novelist Ahmadou Kourouma.
His book, I Was Vermeer, a biography of Han van Meegeren was published by Bloomsbury in August 2006 and serialised as the British Broadcasting Corporation Radio 4 "Book of the Week" (read by Anton Lesser) in August 2006.