website by simon www.english-house.net

all uncredited photos are by Simon Banwell

 Berlin - Beirut - BSA

It seems a bit strange to be writing about myself but here goes. I was born in 1966, just after England won their first and up-to-now last World Cup and grew up in a small village some 25 kilometres from Brighton, Sussex. We travelled a lot as a family with holidays first to Scotland and then later to France. And when I was 9 years old, we all moved to Victoria, BC, Canada for 9 months, because of Dad's job. I left Sussex at the age of 19 to go to university in Aberdeen, partly because I liked the course, partly the city and mainly as it was the furthest university from my home town! After four interesting years there, I moved to Leicester, as it was cheap and stayed there until I'd got enough money together to pay off my debts and flee to Berlin, Germany. I'd fallen in love with the place when I first went there in the cold winter of 1988 to write my thesis on the Bauhaus and promised myself that I would live there one day. Well I've been keeping that promise for the last 18 years, in which time Mum and Dad have moved to France, my elder sister to Australia and my younger one divides her time between England and France.

I seem to spend most of my time in Berlin working, teaching English at an adult education centre and when I am not doing that, I'm sitting in France, renovating a farmhouse. Simon