I'm an author of several well regarded, large-scale book projects. The Hip Hop Years was published both in Britain and America and accompanied the BAFTA-nominated Channel 4 TV series of the same title, on which I served as consultant. No More Heroes was an exhaustive 600,000-word project analysing the punk era and its contributors. Independence Days, my latest book, has already received rave reviews and documents the development of independent record labels in the UK over a ten-year period, drawing on more than 150 interviews. Other books include biographies of Radiohead, a further tie-in with Channel 4 (for their Top Ten series) and a book on hip-hop lyrics as well as the iconic Def Jam record label. My booklet accompanying the reissue of Pillows & Prayers won the 2008 Mojo Catalogue award. I have written more than 100 CD liner notes, and articles for The Times and numerous music magazines including Classic Rock, Record Collector, Vox, etc as well as websites including the Quietus. I have just been appointed editor of the academic journal Punk & Post-Punk, based at Leeds University and wrote one of the introductions to the Worth Classics edition of Dickens' A Christmas Carol.