Curl

Curl was born in Tokyo to English and Irish parents and educated at Charterhouse in Surrey, England where he won an art scholarship and subsequently the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands and Lund University, Sweden, where he read History.

Curl worked briefly at the British Museum, London, in the Ancient Egyptology department alongside renown Egyptologist Vivien Davies where he learnt to read Egyptian hieroglyphs and awakened his love for ancient and enigmatic cultures. He has travelled widely in Africa and Asia and has worked with statesmen and artists alike, from being photographer to Cuban laureate Pablo Armando Fernández to filmmaker to the President of Latvia. While in Cuba he interviewed the Castro family about Cuba's political future. As a film director he has won the Horror Film Festival, the Netherlands (2002) and has lectured on film theory in the UK and abroad. He is also a published cryptographer having contributed to academic journals internationally including the journal Eidos.

In 2008 he became the first non-African to cross the Tanezrouft area of the Sahara without motorized transport and the youngest to traverse the Sahara by camel. During his time in the desert he lived with the Touareg nomads, travelling with the tribes of the Kel Ahaggar and Kel Ifoghas, witnessing their threatened lifestyle first hand. While in the Sahara he crossed the 1200 miles on foot and by camel from the Hoggar mountains in Algeria to Timbuktu in Mali, reaching the city in only 50 days. He has published articles about his findings and experiences and written a basic dictionary of Tamasheq, the language of the Touareg. He was nominated for a Rolex Award for Exploration and Discovery in 2009.