About

My formation as a historian began not in a library but in a house. I grew up at Stokesay Court in Shropshire, where my father served as head gardener and chauffeur to Sir Philip Magnus-Allcroft, baronet, published historian, and a man who took the past seriously as a living responsibility. Sir Philip encouraged my early interest in history directly, testing my knowledge, discussing ideas, and giving me books he considered worth reading. When he died in December 1988, he left me with a sense of custodianship that has shaped everything I have written since: the conviction that the past carries obligations, not merely stories, and that the people history tends to overlook deserve the same rigour and attention as those it has always celebrated.

That conviction has driven two decades of archival research into Welsh farming dynasties, Nonconformist chapel communities, and the wider social history of Victorian and Edwardian Britain. My work in Welsh history is rooted in primary sources, oral testimony, and a deep familiarity with the landscapes and institutions that shaped upland communities from the eighteenth century onwards. Alongside this, I have developed a specialism in the Victorian and Edwardian country house, examining how households of that kind functioned not merely as architectural statements but as moral and managerial systems, structures of duty, expectation, and accountability that shaped everyone within them, from the family in the drawing room to the staff in the yard.

My professional life has run parallel to this historical work rather than in opposition to it. For over two decades I have worked in operational leadership and governance across the third sector and commercial enterprise, leading teams of forty or more staff and volunteers, securing over £300,000 in funding for community projects, and authoring service level agreements for local government. I have transformed charity retail operations, including achieving a 66% increase in annual revenue at one organisation, and worked with boards and trustees on governance reform, institutional culture, and ethical leadership. That experience directly informs my writing on organisations. The Trust Trap examines how trust is built, broken, and misused within the charitable sector, while The Toxic Workplace explores exclusion, power, and dysfunction in organisational life. When I write about how moral culture shapes institutions, it reflects experience as much as research. Institutional failures are rarely merely administrative. They are cultural, and they have precedents.

Selected Publications

Historical Works

Voices from the Uplands: The Davies Family and the Soul of Rural Wales (2025) From Fields to Railways: The Jenkins Family Story (2025) Faith, Service, and Respectability: A Historical Biography of the Shorto Family, 1680–1997 (2025) Duty and Dignity: George Roberts Shorto (1836–1905) (2025) Arthur Owen Jones (1872–1914): England Captain, Gentleman Amateur, and the Fragility of Edwardian Greatness (2026) Murder in the Marches: A Chronicle of Montgomeryshire, Merionethshire, and Radnorshire 1805–1910 (2026) William Jones of Glandwr Hall: Law, Authority, and the Making of a Victorian Life (2026) Off the Rails: The Story of Crewe Steam Train Driver Alfred Jenkins (2026) A Small History of My Life to My Children: The Memoir of Richard Emmett, a Victorian Soldier (2026) The House of Allcroft (forthcoming, 2026)

Earlier Works

The Allcroft Family: From Worcester to Stokesay Court (2016) Old Llyfnant Valley Farming Families (2015) The Shorto Family of Exeter (2015) The Davies Caeadda Family: A Welsh Farming Dynasty, 1700–1966 (2014)

Leadership, Governance, and Organisational Culture

The Trust Trap: How Good Charities Lose Their Way, and How We Can Save Them (2025) The Toxic Workplace: What Happens When You’re Not in the Clique (2025) A Guide to the Senedd: Understanding Welsh Democracy (2025)

I also write articles and commentary on Welsh history, heritage, leadership, and archival preservation, including for Who Do You Think You Are? magazine and Nation.Cymru.

Recognition

I am a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society (FRAS), an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (AFRHistS), a Fellow of the Institute of Leadership (FIoL), a Member of the Chartered Management Institute (MCMI), and a member of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion.

I advocate for the preservation of fragile archives essential to understanding our collective past, and work with heritage bodies and community groups to strengthen long-term access and care.

Contact

I welcome enquiries from readers, researchers, and organisations interested in Welsh history, family archives, cultural heritage, leadership, governance, and the social history of the Victorian and Edwardian country house. Please feel free to get in touch via my Contact page.