Andrew is a retired United Nations interpreter. He studied Arabic and Persian at Cambridge University and lived and worked in Iran and Oman for many years before joining the UN as a translator. With the UN, he was based first in New York, then in Vienna, Nairobi and Geneva. Apart from many conferences, his work has taken him on peacekeeping missions to Nicaragua and Iraq, and on human rights missions to countries as different from each other as his own United Kingdom and the Central African Republic.