After leaving Colchester Royal Grammar School in 1974, where I studied Russian, Latin, French and German, I went to study Russian Literature in Oxford. In 1977 I graduated and qualified as a teacher. Having taught in Thessaloniki for a year, in 1979 I left Greece to study at the Russian Orthodox St Sergius seminary in Paris, meeting the last Paris White Russians who had been adults before 1917. In 1980 I married and then became an Orthodox priest, also working in Paris as a lecturer in European political and cultural history. We had six children (currently with twelve grandchildren – all our children live in Suffolk, Essex or London). Apart from living in Paris, I also spent time in Lisbon from 1992 on, setting up the first Orthodox church there. I started publishing my first books on Church history and theological and pastoral themes in Paris, then in 1997 we returned to England to live in Suffolk.

Here I continued writing, publishing more books, setting up a website, teaching and taking part in broadcasts on Channel 4 and Radio 4. I gave talks at Church conferences in the USA and Australia and also spoke at conferences in Russia and Eastern Europe, notably at official events for the Russian Church reunion in Moscow and in the Kremlin in 2007. In Eastern England I have fundraised and bought church buildings, buying and setting up new Orthodox churches in Felixstowe in 1997, two churches in my native Colchester (at the old Garrison Church) in 2008, Norwich in 2016 and Cambridge in 2020. These are all international parishes, which have resisted any political manipulations, interference or extremes from Greek or Russian alike, keeping to the royal way. This is why our churches are with the Autonomous Metropolia of Western and Southern Europe of the Romanian Church, centred in Paris.