Born in Oxford and armed with a pencil from the moment I could hold one, I’ve spent the last five decades happily tangled up in art. After attending Camberwell College of Art, my career began in the wonderfully precise world of botanical illustration - where every leaf, petal and stamen had to be just so. I combined my love of science and natural history with a steady hand and an eye for microscopic detail, working as a botanical illustrator for The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Royal Horticultural Society as well as Macmillan Publishers. Over the years I’ve drawn thousands of plants and my work appears in many books, papers and scientific journals. Along the way, I somehow picked up four RHS Gold Medals and was elected a Fellow of The Linnean Society for services to botanical illustration - which I’m pretty proud about.

Then life took a wonderfully unexpected turn: marriage, two boys, a change of scene and a new chapter. I traded the microscope for murals, painting classrooms and dormitories at a Northamptonshire prep school. One thing led to another (as it tends to do), and before long I found myself teaching Art as well as Design and Technology - a role that perfectly balanced creativity with family life.

But the lure of the pen was strong. My trusty Rotring and I turned our attention to another great love: food. In 2017, I set up a stall at the school Christmas Fair with 15 original ink drawings of cheese and sold the lot. Inkyjinks was born!

Since then, I’ve been happily doodling the nation’s favourite nibbles from nostalgic biscuits to classic jars and tins, adding to the Inkyjinks collection one delicious detail at a time. I now head the Art Department at a Hertfordshire prep school (a job I love), but at weekends and during the holidays, you’ll find me sneaking off to my studio with a cup of tea, a slice of something nice, and my pen - ready to ink the nation’s favourite foods, from biscuits to beer, celebrating the fonts, packaging and nostalgia that make them so irresistible.