Simon had three related careers: military engineer/intelligence analyst, owner/founder of a geopolitical risk company and now historian.
Highlights of the Army career included teaching at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, engineering in Bosnia and Northern Ireland, Pakistan Command and Staff course Quetta, MOD as a staff officer in the Directorate of Military Operations. But also lots of mountaineering (Alps, Peru and Alaska) and finally two periods on exchange with the Canadian Army in Vancouver then Ottawa.
It took decade to build Exclusive Analysis (EA) whose niche was a managed global source network and very specific forecasts about world events. Client value came from data-rich pricing models for the insurance industry to which EA was the biggest provider of political intelligence. In 2012 Exclusive Analysis was acquired by IHS (now IHS/Markit). They also owned Jane’s but EA landed in Economics and Country Risk and after another take over many of the EA team work in the Standard and Poor Country Risk team. For a decade Simon was a Non-Executive Director at Lowe and Fletcher and also invested in companies with digital offerings, including; Gift Wink, Sandpit, Deepcrawl. Areas of advice include: structuring a sales process, the value of brand and building robust code that clients actually want.
Now there is a creative phase as a film maker, historian, Museum Trustee and speaker. Films include Containment (Netflix). Road Games and now Amashinga. Present areas of interest include. How history can inform modern geopolitics ie what actually is the history of Ukraine. Battle of Imphal India 1944. Japan Ally to Enemy (1850 to 1945) ie geopolitical history of Japan; the future of knowledge; some political economy such as How does Paris get fed. (Hayek). Simon is a trustee at the Cumbria Museum of Military Life in Carlilse and The Kohima Museum in York.
Simon has degrees from RMCS (Maths and Physics); MA in War Studies from the University of Baluchistan and an MPhil from Downing College, Cambridge in International Relations.
Present hobbies include sailing, limited cross country skiing. No longer ride a motorbike; see blogs on Pain control!.
