Welcome to my personal website. I am an experienced Asia hand, having lived in the region for nearly 40 years. This includes 25 years in mainland China, as well as time in Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Sri Lanka, Dubai, Mongolia and Russia. I am one of the very few “Eurasian expats” with experience throughout this vast region. More recently I have expanded my reach to include Eurasia – having been so long in the Far East I now regard myself as part Asian, part European in outlook. Certainly, I have noticed over the years I tend now to think and valuate situations in a different way than the earlier Western attitudes I possessed until my thirties.
I currently live in Sri Lanka during the winter months and in Mongolia and Russia during the summer. Malta acts as my European go-between.
Apart from my professional life, I am a keen naturalist and ornithologist, writer, musician, and have also been described as a gourmet chef! I am today the senior member of the Devonshire-Ellis industrial family, best known for their ownership of the John Brown Shipyards and the building of many great Ocean Liners, among them the Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, Mauretania, Lusitania and the Royal Yacht Britannia.
My professional career as the Founding Partner and Chairman of one of Asia’s largest foreign investment consulting practices has been mirrored by my professional writings on China and the region, which may be found via Amazon and Asia Briefing. My most recent book, about China’s Belt & Road Initiative has been a regional best seller, and I hope to continue my career as a writer. My professional profile is here.
My non-business books, which are rather more interesting, include a Travel Guide to Mongolia, and a volume of China Expat Tales. Upcoming in Autumn 2024 is a book of Sri Lankan based children’s stories, to be followed by a collection of more adventure-based anecdotes and observations about Mongolia in spring 2025 and a volume of tales from the British Raj era Ceylon later that year.
I am also a titled Baron, having been assigned the Barony of Coigach in 2011, and support several charitable institutions, including Care for Children, the Surmang Foundation and the Snow Leopard Trust among others.
The important thing to know is that aged 25, I was homeless, having experienced a failed business, and living in sheltered accommodation in the UK with drug addicts and petty criminals. Yet this is not a website about self-promotion. It is a website about never giving up and when you’ve reached bottom, what can happen when you start to go back up. Because there is only one way to go when you’re down. This website is proof of that. I have come a long way. Detractors would wish otherwise, and success unfortunately always breeds an element of jealousy, hatred and contempt, particularly for those often in the public eye, as I have been in China especially. However, I have moved way beyond such trivial pettiness. I would recommend others do as well.
Today, I am a regular traveller throughout the Eurasian region and have established this website to share my personal travel and life experiences with any interested parties. If it helps encourage people to take life by the balls and live it usefully, then hopefully it will have succeeded. Life is there to be enjoyed, albeit under a reasonable element of responsibility, and there is a big world out there. I thoroughly recommend getting out and seeing it, and I hope you enjoy this website.
Finally, anyone that wishes too may reach out to me via [email protected]
My door is always open to friends.