The proceeds of his first magazine, which he edited while still at school, bought him his first typewriter. After reading Modern Languages at Cambridge University, he gained his PhD at Sussex and Hamburg Universities, comparing British and German broadcasting. He joined the BBC after university in 1966 and trained first in World Service radio and later in TV. After a short spell as a university lecturer in Northern Ireland teaching European Studies he went to Brussels as Press Officer at the Council of Ministers of the EU from 1974 to 1981.
Martyn Bond
He was BBC Correspondent in Berlin for the next two years, and then went back to Brussels to work in the Council Secretariat until 1989. He then moved to London as Director of the European Parliament Office in the UK for the next ten years. From 2000 to 2003 he was Director of the Federal Trust for Education and Research, an independent think tank specialising in European affairs.