Philip Ludikar

was born in Shropshire, England, to Czech parents. (In 1948 they had been refugees from communist Czechoslovakia who shortly after escaping settled in the United Kingdom.) He studied Biochemistry at Manchester University. After graduating in 1983 he spent half a year travelling in the Middle East and Africa. On returning to Britain he changed jobs several times - for a few months he worked as a taxi driver in London and later, during one summer, he sold ice cream from a van outside the Tate Gallery. In 1987 he became a chemistry teacher and taught at a sixth form college in Essex. In 1991 he gave up teaching and moved to Prague, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) where he began renovating and managing his family's properties. (These properties had been confiscated by the Czechoslovak communist regime and then were restituted after 1989 by the subsequent democratic governments. One of these properties is Chateau Mirošov www.zamek-mirosov.cz) He still lives in Prague but is now with his Sri Lankan wife, Akhila, whom he married in 2007.