Ben is a fo
rmer Financial Times technology reporter who traded the media on for a career in communications about 10 years ago. Since then it’s been his privilege to work for two of Europe’s greatest technology companies – Nokia (yes it does still exist, see here) and now Amadeus, which brought him to Madrid in January 2013.
He has a passion for sport, supporting a variety of teams that have brought various levels of misery and the New England Patriots; he plays golf badly, cricket rarely and runs whenever his knees allow him.
He loves reading – and in particular crime fiction, for which he has a sporadically updated blog, Material Witness – and also to write.
He loves to travel and his favourite destinations are New England, the Ile de Re and – lately – all four corners of the Iberian peninsula, where he is also happy to indulge his passion for food and wine, sampling Rioja, Ribera and everything else the region has to offer.
Ben was brought up in the Thames Valley in England, went to school in Somerset and university in London where he stayed and met…
Jane, who is an actual Londoner. Jane is a lawyer, specialising in privacy and data protection, so your personal data is very safe with us here at Mainlyontheplain.
She also likes the good things in life: food, wine and travel. She loves to play tennis and padel, and to to hike. One of her ambitions for living in Spain is to walk more of the Camino de Santiago. Jane is an accomplished amateur photographer and will provide many of the photos for the site.
We live together in El Encinar de Los Reyes, a north eastern suburb of Madrid not far from the airport. We have three kids, one of whom lives with us all year round, putting us to shaming with her near fluent Spanish and local accent. The other two visit in the holidays having foolishly opted to attend boarding school in rainy and windswept England.