Skinarchitect, 39

Books, walking, history, and the Romantics Sensitive and thoughtful, loves learning, creativity and being outdoors. I'm a historian, a PhD student currently, and in my spare time I do story writing, model making, swimming and traditional sword dancing. My music is classical, rock and folk, and my favourite books are by George Eliot, the Brontes, Thomas Mann, Kafka and Dostoyevsky. I speak German and enjoy travelling, especially in Germany, Russia and China.

I'm quiet in big groups and like my own space, but I'm not exactly shy, and I love chatting about life in general, perhaps with a bit of history, pub philosophy and art thrown in. I'm very relaxed about most things, but I work hard and take pride in having a fair measure of determination and staying power!

Discovering Tchaikovsky aged 18 was a big event for me, and I've since broadened out to most things between Beethoven and Shostakovich. Chopin, Britten's string quartets, Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde and 4th symphony, and the mystical Englishness of Vaughan Williams are also important.