Jonathan Bennett biography
Jonathan Bennett studied at Cambridge, where he first developed a taste for early mornings, strenuous exercise and cold water, first rowing and later as a half-blue in Modern Pentathlon. All of this would help with the trials and tribulations of surfing. Somehow he also managed to pick up a degree in French and Latin.
After a brief flirtation with office life in London, he bought a motorbike and fled to Barcelona, where he wrote a series of novels and screenplays, supporting himself first as an English teacher and tour guide, and later as a magazine editor and columnist, film critic and travel writer.
His initial intention to stay in Spain for a year or two was slowly extended to fifteen years. Having witnessed the transformation of Barcelona from a cheap, charming, Bohemian backwater into a glitzy, expensive, over-crowded tourist trap, he returned to Britain, first to Cardiff, where he surfed the silt-brown waters of the Bristol channel, and then to London. London was no better second time round, so he bought a campervan and fled to the coast.
Jonathan has written several episodes of continuing drama Doctors on BBC1, episodes of the app-drama Persona and the experimental feature-length film Dark Bridge. He has further TV and film projects in development with Tiger Aspect and Saskia Vischer productions.
His travel writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent and Time Out, and he wrote the first Time Out Guide to Menorca. He is the author of the long-running Roger de Flower column in Barcelona Metropolitan and has a surfing blog at www.eightywaves.blogspot.com.
How I Found the Agency
During my surf trip round Britain, I looked up a writer; James Henry, who has the same film and TV agent as me (Matt Connell at Berlin Associates). James wrote about my trip on our blog, which was read by my previous film and TV agent, Jean Kitson at MBA, who got in touch to say hello. I asked Jean if she had any recommendations for literary agents, and she suggested Andrew, who works quite closely with MBA on film and TV projects. I sent him three chapters and a synopsis, and to my delight, he took me on.
