About me

Au milieu de l’hiver, j’apprenais enfin qu’il y avait en moi un été invincible.
— Albert Camus, “Retour à Tipasa” (1952)

Stephen Taylor, FRSA

Livelihood I built and edited the developers’ website of a company founded by a friend. I also work part-time as a developer writing software for the pension industry. For some years I edited Vector, my professional association’s journal; I also served as its webmaster and converted it from print to online publication. I am a panelist on The Array Cast, a fortnightly podcast about the array-programming languages, and speak at conferences.

I have a life-long interest in typography and typesetting, and rebuilt the journal’s production system for publishing online and in print. I have designed and typeset books in Microsoft Word, DocBook, XSL-FO and TeX.

🌐 Professional website

Connection [Religion: from re-ligere (Latin) to reconnect to something beyond the subjective self] In the 1970s I converted to Rinzai Zen Buddhism and trained for some years with what is now Shobo-an temple. In the 1980s I trained as a psychotherapist; I do not practise.

I live in North London, where I co-founded my street association and the local neighbourhood forum. In 2009 I was the London venue manager for the Convention on Modern Liberty. In 2016 I stood as the Green Party candidate to represent Camden & Barnet in the Greater London Assembly.

I serve currently as the UK Lead for the Compassion Connectors programme of the Global Compassion Coalition.

Transport I get around on foot and by bicycle and co-founded a monthly bike maintenance workshop. In 2012 some friends and I founded Londoners on Bikes, a pop-up campaign to make road safety an issue in the London mayoral election. When the moon is full and the weather fine I’ve been known to ride to the seaside for breakfast.

In 2023 I cycled to Burgundy to visit my sister and some other friends, spending six weeks on the road.

Words In the 1970s I was a performing member of Ignition Poets. Recently I typeset and printed a collection of my own verse. From time to time I have written for openDemocracy. In 2016 I enrolled in the Westcountry School of Myth and Storytelling; I occasionally perform at Pentameters Theatre.

I speak French, German, Danish and Swedish; mostly badly.

Contact I have been SJT on email since before the internet. Write to me at sjt@5jt.com.

Other lives

So often one’s true life is the life one does not lead.

Oscar Wilde

You can live two lives, but not three.

Nigella Lawson

Author, barrister, jazz singer, saxophonist, therapist, typographer & printer

When I grow up I want to be like

• Charles Causley
• Robert Bringhurst