Charles is an Australian-born writer, editor and historian living in London. His most recent book is Crucible.
He is also the editor of Translator, a magazine of translated journalism and reportage from beyond the Anglosphere.
Charles has had a life-long fascination with the relationship between geopolitics and identity, culture and politics, the ways individuals experience the currents of history - and the way the stories we tell about the past shape our present.
These interconnected passions have led him to write three very different books: a work of reportage about the impact of climate change on the people and politics of the Arctic, a revisionist tour of the world of 1913 at the apex of imperial globalisation, and an up-close, present-tense narrative of the transformative years from the Russian revolution to the roaring twenties, a time of dictators and terrors, of civil conflict and a collapsing world order - with stark and troubling echoes of today. 1913 has been translated into Chinese; The Future History of the Arctic into Russian. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2022.
In 2025, he set up a Translator, a magazine combining translated journalism and reportage with writing about language and translation itself, working with a core team in London, a wonderful group of contributing editors and translators and publications all over the world.
Born in Australia, Charles grew up in London and has lived across Europe. He studied history in Germany and at Oxford, and international relations the School of Political Science in Paris. Much of his career has been spent working in think tanks and foreign policy. Charles has written for the Los Angeles Review of Books, New Lines, the Times Literary Supplement, 1843, Apollo, and History Today amongst others, and editorial leaders for the Financial Times. In 2014 he wrote and presented a BBC Radio 4 documentary series on the Armenian diaspora from Manchester and Venice to Istanbul and Yerevan. In 2019, he was the historical adviser to the British Museum exhibition Edvard Munch: Love and Angst.
Alongside editing Translator, Charles is currently working on a book retelling European history from the margins, and a podcast about exiles, and their role as links between British and global histories.
- The Trouble with the French Republic, LA Review of Books
- Vienna's Vapour Trail, Engelsberg
- Germany's chaotic year - 1923 and the lessons for today, Financial Times
- Eurowhiteness - The Limits of European Solidarity, Financial Times
- The Rock at the End of the British Empire, New Lines Magazine
- The Last King of Lanzarote, From our own correspondent, BBC Radio 4
- Singing from Stalin's songsheet, TLS
- Romance and Relics in Chopin's Warsaw, Apollo.org
- Review of Crucible by Peter Conrad, The Guardian
- Review of Crucible by Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Times Literary Supplement
- Transfigured Continent: Travels Through Munch's Europe, article in Edvard Munch: Love and Angst, British Museum
- Gabriele d'Annunzio's Fiume Escapade, History Today
- Music on the Brink, BBC Radio 3
- Out of Armenia, BBC Radio 4
- Ukraine and Russia’s History Wars, History Today
- In Search of the Vikings, 1843
- Review of 1913 by Michael Bishop, Washington Post
- Review of 1913 by David Crane, The Spectator
- Russia on the Eve of the First World War, History Today
- Eve of Disaster, Foreign Policy
- Review of The Future History of the Arctic by Joanna Kavenna, The Spectator
- Russia’s Arctic Opening, Foreign Policy
- What Moscow wants in the Arctic, Financial Times
- Globalization of the Arctic is unstoppable, Chatham House
