I first travelled to the Balkans as a freelance photographer during the Serbo-Croat and Bosnian wars. Later I worked in central Europe and the Balkans, contributing to The Daily Telegraph and The European.

In 1996 I was offered the Daily Telegraph's Balkans Correspondent job and moved to live in a beautiful old, shabby flat in Sarajevo, a city just beginning to recover from four years of destruction.

I covered the aftermath of the Bosnian war - the mass graves and the hatreds - the war in Kosovo - more killing and revenge - and, finally, the overthrow of Milosevic.

Intermittently I also worked in Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece and central Europe. Later I worked in Sierra Leone and spent several months in Afghanistan, both in the north and Kabul, after 9/11.

In late 2002, I moved to Russia as Moscow Correspondent for the Daily Telegraph.

After spending the war in Iraq, I returned to cover Putin's Russia, the emergence of Chechen terrorism and the soft revolutions in the former CIS.

In the summer of 2005 I left Russia and the Daily Telegraph for Canada and a change of direction. With my girlfriend Kristin, I currently own and run a small ranch in the Rocky Mountains. You can see what we do at www.GrizzlyBearRanch.ca.