All about me

About Lesley SonesI’m an irrepressible traveller, eternal optimist and award-winning journalist. And if you want travel and leisure writing that's sassy - but classy - you’ve come to the right place.

I've been a journalist since my star-struck school days when I reviewed rock bands for a national UK music paper. I've covered courts, crime, garden parties, health, business, women's issues, restaurant reviews and everything else a journalist gets to do.

Then I moved to Cairo and spent four years living in that amazing, crazy city, where I ended up editing a monthly IT magazine. In English, luckily...

A follow-the-sun policy brought me to South Africa, and I'm now so proudly South African that my Yorkshire accent has faded to a mere fraction of its former self. Phew!

After 12 years as the IT Editor for Business Day I quit to follow my passion for writing opinionated pieces for any publication bold enough to run them. I write in a quirky, humorous style and my absolute loves are travel, theatre, the cinema, wining and dining.

In 2016 I won the Arts Journalism Awards run by the National Arts Festival and Business & Arts South Africa in the review category, for my always honest and sometime acerbic theatre reviews!

Now after a complete rethink during the Covid lockdowns I've reinvented myself as an English teacher for adults, and in April 2022 I moved to Santiago in Chile for a while! I'm loving it so far, so who knows what the future holds...

If you want to compliment me (yay) complain about something I've written (eish) or better still, commission me for some writing, you can give me a yell here