Julian Brown

Born and educated in England, art historian Julian Brown made his home in Paris over thirty years ago. Family holidays introduced him to the joys and fascination of travel and foreign cultures at a very young age and he began leading tours around Europe in the early 1980s whilst studying French and Spanish at the University of Durham.

He now spends much of each year conducting museum visits and historical walking tours in the French capital and leads tours through the French provinces. When not in France, he is probably lecturing on tours in Italy, Spain or Southeast Asia, where he spends time each winter.

His passion for this part of the world began with a more or less chance visit to Vietnam in the early 1990s, and he has travelled extensively in Asia ever since, studying its art and culture, and leading tours throughout the region. He holds a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, on the colonial and museological contexts of the art of ancient Champa (Vietnam), and has lectured on his research at universities, museums, royal societies and international conferences.

Books, opera and classical music compete with travel, art and history as his main passions. He divides his time between Paris and a home on the river Seine in Normandy.