I was educated at Trinity College Dublin, plus postgraduate work at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Paris. I have taught at university level in Paris, then at Exeter and Sussex, with year as visiting prof at UBC Vancouver. My literary interests are in French and German as well as in English, but I am also interested in philosophy, history and politics. A former soccer player, I enjoy various sports as well the theatre and the cinema. I am married with a daughter and twin sons, and I now live - rather to my surprise - in the bourgeois arty pseudo-village of Hampstead in London, UK.