Investigative work

Investigation 1

Queen Ethelburga’s

The first resulted from a conversation with a taxi-driver at York Station about the boarding school Queen Ethelburga’s, and its owner Brian Martin, who was then in court for historic sexual offences against pupils. I traced the remarkable history of his ownership: he bought the entire school for a pound and moved it and all its pupils to his own home. It is still run by Martin’s daughter Amy, and the underlying land is owned by the offshore trust Foxlow, over which Martin retains control – all the ground rents go to him. Since he got out of prison, he lives in Scotland. The Martins maintain that Foxlow is owned by a charity. The Panama Papers say otherwise.

This investigation was published online by The Fence magazine, and follow-up reporting was commissioned by The Telegraph. I then reported on the trial of another Queen Ethelburga’s teacher, Alexander Rawls, for The Times. An unusually high number of teachers from QE in this period were convicted of sexual offences. As a result of this reporting, Brian Martin was banned from involvement in schools by the Secretary of State for Education.

Investigation 2

Samuel Smith’s brewery

I spent a year speaking to people who’d had dealings with Humphrey Smith, the reclusive and eccentric owner of the Samuel Smiths brewery. There were a million stories about Humph locally, mostly concerning his tightfistedness, his dictatorial manner and obsessive pursuit of historical buildings. Hundreds of Sam Smiths-owned pubs were shuttered and mouldering, because Humph kept sacking management couples so no one wanted to work for him. I also got to the bottom of his one-man crusade against planning authorities.

This piece was published as a Guardian Long Read, and it has a happy ending. The Sam Smiths pub in my village was opened six months after publication – the management couple had read the feature. The Sun Inn is a great pub and is going strong two years on.

Humphrey Smith died in February 2026, and his son Samuel took up the reins at the brewery, since which time a significant number of pubs have been reopened, some have been sold off, and management couples have been offered a better deal.

Investigation 3

Nigel Farage

In late 2025 I was alerted to a Facebook post by Andy Field, who had been at school with Nigel Farage, and had decided to share his memories of witnessing Farage’s persistently racist behaviour. I interviewed Andy – a compelling witness – and followed up a number of leads with other witnesses, thinking I would work the story slowly and surely to build up a body of evidence. Then David Lammy gave a speech at the Labour Party conference referencing the fact that Farage had allegedly sung “Hitler Youth” songs in a CCF exercise, something previously reported by Michael Crick. Reform threatened legal action and Lammy backed down and apologised. By this time I had already interviewed people who’d been on that exercise, so knew that the song was in fact “Gas ’Em All,” a favourite of the National Front, and that Farage had led the singing.

I went to The Guardian with what I had and worked alongside investigations reporter Henry Dyer and chief reporter Dan Boffey to find more witnesses. Farage threatened to sue us, too, but our witnesses signed statements to the effect that they were prepared to go to court. We found 34 witnesses willing to go on the record about Farage’s appalling treatment of Jewish, Black and Asian pupils, published more than ten stories, three of them on the front page, and the Prime Minister brought up our reports at PMQs. Farage tried a number of different denials. They’re all bullshit.

Read the main Guardian report here.

Investigation 4

The sovereign citizen movement

I’ve been working for over a year on a story about the Sovereign Citizen/Freeman-on-the-land movement in the UK, which will be published as a Guardian Long Read later this year.