Bio

My background is German Jewish on one side and mostly Irish on the other. My parents were visual artists and I’ve drawn and painted since I was very young.

In my twenties I travelled in South America, took a degree in Philosophy and Spanish, began writing short stories and trained as a barrister.

After a few years at the bar, practising in criminal defence work, in 1989 I spent a sabbatical in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Over a period of eight months I researched human rights issues for a small NGO and studied Arabic. Young and impressionable, I developed a love of the landscape and people of Palestine and an insight into Israel’s system of apartheid. 

Back at the bar in London, I switched to ‘child protection’ work, representing local authorities, parents and children in care proceedings. It was painful, draining work and in 1992 I left London to work part time in a local authority legal department, hoping to get time to write.

I took another break in 1993 and travelled to northern Iraq, where my time was spent drinking tea with Iraqi Kurds and listening to their stories. The natural beauty of Kurdistan and the raw warmth of its battered people touched me deeply. My first book, Sweet Tea with Cardamom: a Journey through Iraqi Kurdistan  was published by Pandora/Harper Collins in 1997.

I made my first visit to Lebanon in 1999. The country had intrigued me for many years, due to its sectarian complexity and its significance in the Arab-Israeli conflict. While walking in the gorges of northern Mount Lebanon, I formulated the questions which would be at the heart of my second book, The Curtain Maker of Beirut: Conversations with the Lebanese, which was published by Berkshire Academic Press in 2006.

By now I was a mother and for the next ten years most of my time was spent working, parenting and painting. But in 2015, the war in Syria and the arrival of large numbers of refugees in Europe brought my attention back to the Middle East. In spring 2016 I revived my Arabic, left my son with his dad and volunteered in a refugee camp in northern Greece. This led to my third book, Hara Hotel: A Tale of Syrian Refugees in Greece, in which I interweave a chronicle of everyday life in the camp with my attempt to understand the political and historic factors driving the war. Hara Hotel was published by Verso in 2018.

After winding up my legal practise in 2022 I  wrote a memoir in which I described my experiences as a lone-mum-child-protection-lawyer and set out my thoughts about the English and Welsh child protection system. This is my fourth book, In Harm’s Way: the Memoir of a Child Protection Lawyer, published by Harper Collins in 2024.

My fifth book is another memoir, about my mother, Sheila Denning, who was a portrait painter. Drawing on her letters, my childhood memories and what I see in her paintings, I tell Sheila’s story, framing it in the context of the struggles of twentieth century women artists to gain recognition for their work. Sheila: Portrait of an Unknown Artist will be published as a deluxe paperback with 22 colour plates on 29 January 2026. It can be bought here.