About
I am a historian of cultural history from c. 1750 to the present, with a particular interest in the history of museums. My books include the first comparative history of Paris and London and a study of the landmark 1969 BBC series "Civilisation", and have been translated into eight languages. Alongside academic journals I have written for The Conversation, GQ, Sight and Sound and History Today, as well as co-authoring a graphic novel. In 2017 I co-founded The Lausanne Project, which explores the legacy of the Treaty of Lausanne a century on. In 2019 Profile published Mr Five Per Cent, a biography of the Anglo-Armenian oil magnate, financier and art collector Calouste Gulbenkian (1869-1955), that won the BAC Wadsworth Prize for Business History.
In 2021 Columbia University Press commissioned me to write The Met: A History of a Museum and Its People. For more on this ground-breaking project, see the "Research" tab. In 2023 I was commissioned by the National Gallery (London) to write their authorized bicentenary history. These books will appear in October and November 2024.
For my next book I am writing a biography of the Chevalière D'Eon, an eighteenth-century French trans diplomat and spy.