Simon De Burton, is a highly respected journalist and author combining his passion for classic cars, motorbikes and watches in his work.

1. Describe briefly your childhood.

Too much happened in my childhood to describe it briefly – but key moments included being unexpectedly conceived when my mother was 44 and being born with three siblings who were older than me by 13 years, 15 years and 24 years respectively; spending the first six years of my life in the family’s Georgian manor before my parents separated, leaving my mother and I homeless; learning to ride a motorcycle aged six; becoming acquainted with two former Prime Ministers by the age of eight; encountering my first dead body aged 10; driving a car on the public highway for the first time aged 12 and becoming involved with a considerably older woman at the age of 16. After that, I was no longer a child.

2. As a child did you have any driving ambition?

I was schooled by Benedictine monks and, prior to puberty, I admired them and wanted to follow their righteous path. Several of those I looked up to are now in prison for child abuse. Post-puberty, I harboured ambitions to be a cartoonist, ballet dancer, actor, motor mechanic, car and motorcycle racer, antiques dealer and, inspired my my father’s exploits as a Royal Artillery Captain during the Burma Conflict, a soldier. From the age of 18 – 22 I studied fine art, but ended up working for newspapers.

3. What is your first significant memory as a child?

Waking up at the age of two and being fed bread and milk by my mother while looking out of her bedroom window at two brown horses in the field below. I had apparently been at death’s door for three days having eaten a poisonous berry off an enticing plant in the greenhouse.

4. Have you ever had another profession?

Yes. I have worked as a van driver for a bakery, a sous chef, a graphic artist, a newspaper ‘promotions executive’, a sign writer, a farm labourer, a haulage driver, a secondhand car and motorcycle dealer, an antiques trader, a press officer for a major auction house and a news agency reporter specialising in crime and court stories. I am now unemployable.

5. What made you decide to go in the direction you are currently in?

After training as a journalist and working as a reporter for a few years, I became a press officer with Sotheby’s in London. My family’s business was in auctioneering and my mother was an antiques dealer, so I had a background in that world - and working for Sotheby’s enabled me to combine my love of art with my experience in journalism. After five years, in 1998, I returned to journalism as a freelance, specialising in writing about the art market and auctions in particular. That subsequently expanded to include other subjects that I have an interest in – especially cars, motorcycles, boats and, of course, watches. Regarding the latter, I had always appreciated watches but only began to know more about them as a result of working with the wonderful Tina Millar (who founded Sotheby’s watch sales during the 1960s) and a certain consultant to the department called George Daniels, with whom I enjoyed many conversations about our mutual love of old cars and bikes. Oh, and watches...

6. What’s the worst job you’ve had to do?

Working as a crime reporter is a good way to discover the remarkable level of depravity in the world. If I can take the word ‘job’ to mean a specific task carried out as a reporter, it was being sent to interview a mother less than 24 hours after her two-year-old child had been found choked to death among bushes in a park. The mother’s home was on the 14th floor of a local authority tower block. I knocked on the door and was let in to find her and five friends smoking crack cocaine. It was a very short interview.

7. What’s been the hardest moment in your life so far, and how did you overcome it?

Seeing my beloved eldest brother Dorian lying in bed, unable to open his eyes or speak due to Alzheimer’s disease. I overcame it by walking away and deciding never to see him again, but to remember him as the eccentric, ingenious, loving, independent and unique person he was. He died 18 months later.

8. Who has had the strongest influence on you?

As a child, my mother. She raised me alone from the age of six and instilled in me the importance of being independent and true to oneself. From my mid-teens into adulthood, Dorian. His outlook on life and way of living was bizarre by normal standards, but he taught me to appreciate just how many fake people there are in the world, to trust my own judgment, make my own decisions, be resilient and not to be a sheep that follows the crowd. I am not really a fan of mottos or sayings, but I think the one adopted by Henry Graves Jnr (we all know about him) is a good rule for life: Esse quam videri: to be, rather than to seem.

9. What are you most proud of?

Providing a decent life for my family, despite leaving school with exam passes in just three subjects – English language, English literature and art. The main things I have needed to know about in my career.

10. What advice would you give to a 20 something someone thinking of taking a similar path as you?

Seize all opportunities, take a fatalistic attitude, be open-minded, be brave, don’t be lazy-minded, believe in yourself and do unto others as you’d have them do to you.

11. Name three things on your bucket list.

Race the Baja 500 on a motorcycle; ride around India by motorcycle in order to visit the country’s four mountain railways; spend long periods of time at my home in Corfu and sailing in the Ionian sea .

12. Where do you think the industry is going to be in 10 years time.

Roughly in the same place it’s in now, with some names missing, some new arrivals and the big brands still dominant.

 To learn more about Simon De Burton