He and a friend joined a group of students, led by Olda Černý, who began to produce a mimeographed, ad hoc, daily newssheet called ‘Student’, which aimed to correct the official publication of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Rudé Právo, and to inform the public in the Czech capital of the gradual extinction of the passive resistance movement.

[3][4] In 1974 he was a member of the British eight which won the silver medal at the Lucerne World Championships[5] and was selected by Great Britain as part of the coxed four at the 1975 World Rowing Championships in Nottingham, the four just missed out on a medal finishing in fourth place in the A final.

In 2018, co-wrote with Christopher Dodd the only, so far, biography of Jürgen Gröbler, the most successful coach from any nation in any sport in Olympic history.

After sitting next to a distant cousin for the first time at an embassy dinner party in 1975, he was appointed by her to inherit the life tenancy of the Pierrepont family estate at Thoresby Hall, one of the Dukeries in Nottinghamshire.

His chief contribution was to extract the family and its chattels, from the 8500m 2 of Anthony Salvin’s 1878 Thoresby Hall and build a 2000m 2 house on a new site 1km away.

He was elected to the Council of the National Trust (2000–2010) before joining two other trustees to sit with Lord Blakenham on the Governance Review, which was enacted in 2001.