More about me

I was born and raised in Wellington, New Zealand, with dual British and New Zealand citizenship. Though my family is based in Eastbourne, one of the country’s most affluent areas, we have always striven towards a fairer, more egalitarian society. My ancestors include figures such as my grandmother Kae Miller, a celebrated New Zealand environmentalist and pioneering mental health advocate.

Attending Petone College, a relatively deprived (decile 3) state school, was a formative experience. After that I studied at Victoria University of Wellington, earning a BA (English literature and French) and a BA Hons (English literature, first class). I then edited the university students’ magazine, Salient, in 2002. 

Having found my vocation in writing, I spent much of the 2000s in London working as a journalist. I wrote for specialist political news services, edited a financial magazine, and freelanced for the Guardian.

I planned to keep working as a journalist on my return home in 2010, but, having become concerned about rapidly widening economic disparities, I instead ended up editing the book Inequality: A New Zealand Crisis, published in 2013. Three more books have followed. Having observed that economic inequality is ultimately the result of political choices, and so will largely be solved by governments, I now focus much of my research on the state of our systems of democracy and how they can be renewed.

Out of my work on the above books, and my other endeavours as a researcher, thinker and commentator, I have forged a career as a writer and public intellectual. At the heart of all my work is a desire to help people better understand current affairs: to take information that is complex and technical, or somehow hidden from view, and make it readily intelligible to the public, so that they can more clearly grasp how the world works – and how it might be made a better place.