Simon de Bruxelles - The Writing Lab

I have spent my life working with words. For the past 20 years I have been taking complex issues and turning them into digestible news stories as a correspondent with The Times, one of the world’s great newspapers. My official patch was the west country which included everywhere from the western fringes of London to Wales and the Channel Islands but I did not let geographical boundaries restrict me. My last major assignments were the poisoning by Russian agents of the Skripals in Salisbury, one of the stories of the decade, and the scandal over vote manipulation by Cambridge Analytica .

Prior to The Times I was in charge of the news operation at The European, the paper founded by Robert Maxwell. My role as head of news was to run a network of correspondents covering 27 countries, finding stories with international interest. These ranged from the discovery of Otzi the Ice Man who had been frozen into an Italian glacier for 5,000 years to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I started in Fleet Street as an investigative reporter on The Observer, that great campaigning newspaper, and before that on locals in Sussex where I grew up. I have also lived in Germany and Jersey in the Channel Islands.

In addition to writing, I am also a photographer. I prefer 35mm black and white film which I develop and process myself using vintage Leica cameras and uncoated lenses.

I have spent my life working with words, and now they work for me

Simon