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BIOGRAPHY
I've been a
professional, full-time writer of travel guides and features for over 30
years. I have spent many years travelling and researching in different
parts of the world, and living and working in different countries. For
ten years I was the editor of French Railways' travel magazine, Top
Rail.
My principal specialities are France (all regions), Ireland (including
Northern Ireland), and Israel (especially Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and the
Galilee). I'm now based in London, England.
Always freelance, I have wide experience of UK national newspapers,
consumer magazines, websites, guidebook writing and travel publishing. I
have also written occasionally under the name Jane Pitt - when editors
wanted to give a woman's point of view!
In addition to my travel writing, I am involved in many other activities, causes
and issues, including other kinds of writing. In 2005 I published online
a memoir of the hippy years, called Love. In 2009 I had a novel, The
J-Word, published by the award-winning
independent publisher Snowbooks; it explores how an antisemitic attack,
and the search for justice, affects the Jewish identity of secular north
London Jews.
2009
My novel
The J-Word
was published by Snowbooks at the New Year. I have begun work on another novel, while
continuing to write commissioned guidebooks, travel articles and online destination
guides for a variety of publishers and publications.
2003-2008
I spent these years writing many new guidebooks and updating or
revising my existing titles for new editions. Most of the books have
been translated (German, Dutch, Norwegian,
Hebrew, Polish, Japanese ...) and many published in American
editions. By the end of the period
I was the
author of around 30 travel books and guides,
mostly on France, but also Ireland, Israel, the Canary Islands and
guides for vegetarians. I continued to contribute as a freelance to
several newspapers, magazines and websites, while continuing to build my own
travel website, Focus
Guides.
In
2000-2002
In this period I worked almost entirely for AA Publishing and Thomas Cook
Publishing, researching and writing, and having
six original new
books published
by them in two
years.
From 1990-1999
Throughout these 10 years, I was the editor of the French Railways/Rail
Europe customer magazine
Rail Europe
(originally called
Top Rail,
circulation 200,000), a travel magazine about Europe for rail
travellers, as well as writing guidebooks and some articles. During part
of the period I was also travel editor of
Ford Magazine
(circulation 1,000,000),
Vegetarian Living
(circulation
not known) and the insurance customer magazine
Foresight
(circulation 1,000,000).
In the 1980s
In this period I
contributed
hundreds of articles to the British national press,
especially the
Observer, Guardian, Evening Standard, Mail-on-Sunday, Daily Express,
Sunday Express, Sunday Times, and women's magazine Options.
more biography / the past
Born in
London in 1948, I've always lived and worked as a freelance. I didn't
get into writing 'til the age of 30. Before that I travelled light and
did whatever came to hand ... farm labouring, truck driving, English
tuition.
Before becoming a travel writer,
I lived in several countries, including Greece, India,
Tunisia, and the USA, and most of all have had a lifelong involvement
with France. My home was the Languedoc region in the south of France
for a number of years.
I'm a frequent visitor to France and also to Israel, where my parents
used to live. I'm fascinated by: cultures in conflict, sense of place,
the Mediterranean world.
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