On turning 60, I thought I should take stock to ponder if have spent my years usefully.

So what have I actually achieved?

1. I started my professional career working for a couple of years organising hand dug wells for water, and check dams for soil conservation, in rural Ethiopia and Eritrea.
2. Then I designed a piped water system for a quarter of a million war-displaced people outside Jalalabad in Afghanistan.
3. After pushing papers in Oxford for a year or so I led a water, sanitation and public health programme for a quarter of a million war-displaced people in the besieged cities of the Angolan interior for the best part of five years.
4. During that time I caught a sailfish off the coast of Angola. Tagged and released it.
5. After Angola I learned to dive.
6. Then I earned a PhD.
7. I was appointed director of Anti-Slavery in 2006 and immediately had to organise its financial turnaround.
8. I successfully advocated for making slavery eradication a post-2015 development goal.
9. I found a woman who’d put up with me.
10. I contributed to the introduction of a new statute in British law proscribing forced labour.
11. I ran a marathon, very slowly.
12. I helped expose slavery in the manufacture of garments for Western high street brands.
13. I won Mastermind with the specialist subjects Michael Collins, the novels of Dennis Lehane, and Abraham Lincoln.
14. I helped develop the jurisprudence around “abuse of a position of vulnerability” as a means of trafficking in the case of Chowdury et al v Greece at the European Court of Human Rights.
15. I helped obtain inclusion of victim protection and supply chain transparency measures in the UK Modern Slavery Act (2015).
16. I achieved recognition of forced marriage as slavery in the International Labour Organization’s 2017 estimates of global slavery.
17. I published my 1st novel – The Undiscovered Country about the investigation of a murder during the Irish war of independence.
18. I learned how to take a better photograph.
19. I played a key role in mainstreaming anti-slavery in a major UN migration and livelihoods programme in Myanmar.
20. I published Ethical Leadership: moral decision-making under pressure, based on my doctoral research and including consideration of how the concept of ethical leadership should be deployed in the struggles against slavery and climate change.
21. I published my 2nd novel – Some Service to the State about how an enquiry into the fate of a missing girl exposes the damage caused by partition to modern Ireland.
22. I worked out how to end slavery. Wrote it down in a forthcoming book chapter called “Justice against Power: Marshalling a credible response to slavery eradication.”
23. I’ve been an expert witness in over 200 trafficking cases.
24. I began writing a play on the life of Frederick Douglass.
25. I’ve started writing my fourth book on the Irish peace process… which has given me the idea for another play.

I think, on reflection, I have not led a life of quiet desperation. But that doesn’t mean it’s been without crushing disappointments.

Still, once more onto the breach, once more.