I was born and raised in the Östermalm district in central Stockholm and spent my summers in Dalarö in the Stockholm archipelago. I have lived in these places my entire life, except for several periods during my childhood and adolescence when my family lived first in London and then in Los Angeles. I attended school in both places. There, I developed an early, natural understanding of the English language and Angloamerican culture, which is one reason I was later able to learn to work professionally with English as a second language.
After high school, I worked for a while, played basketball, and studied literature history at Stockholm University, before I managed, through a strange loophole, to be accepted to the Stockholm School of Journalism. I did my internship at Dagens Nyheter and began writing for the newspaper while still in school. I achieved immediate success with a series of high-profile investigative reportages but just as quickly became a controversial figure.
I was never fully at ease with daily newspaper journalism. That’s why, in the late 1980s, I took the opportunity to switch to magazines—first at Jan Stenbeck’s then-newly launched Z Magazine, then at CliC, something of a “Swedish Vogue” at the time, and finally at the equally newly founded Café, CliC’s “baby brother,” Sweden’s first men’s fasion magazine. There, I had the chance to develop my early evoked interests in the visual arts alongside my writing. At Café and Rosenudde Publishing, I met my future wife, Christina Sollenberg Britton, a graphic designer and Café’s first editor-in-chief, who has been my colleague and business partner ever since. We left the publishing house together when it changed ownership, founding our design and branding agency, BrittonBritton, in 1992, as well as the international English-language fashion, culture, and lifestyle magazine Stockholm New (published in 12 issues from 1993 to 2002).
In addition to my roles as creative director at BrittonBritton and editor-in-chief of Stockholm New, I have continued to write “on the side,” though only sporadically for newspapers and magazines. Over the years, I have contributed to a large number of Swedish and international books and other publications, most of them in the fields of art, fashion, photography, design, and gastronomy. In the early 2000s, I finally had the opportunity to develop my writing, including the books Sekelskifte i Stockholm (Norstedts 2004/Albert Bonniers Förlag 2016), PA&Co—mer än en kokbok (Stockholm New Publishing 2008), and Min mamma är död (Albert Bonniers Förlag 2010).
In 2013, we published our book Stockholm New (Stockholm New Publishing), which was launched in conjunction with our exhibition Stockholm New—National Romanticism from Two Turn-of-the-Century Periods: Fashion Photography Meets Painting at the Thielska Gallery in Stockholm. Since then, I have focused primarily on my writing—a promise I made to myself back when Christina and I began working in fashion and the visual arts in the late 1980s: to concentrate on literature after turning fifty. We still operate our agency, BrittonBritton, and our publishing house Stockholm New Publishing. These days, we work on carefully selected projects as senior consultants for Swedish and international clients, without our own studio.
In 2022, after nine years of work, I published my major biography, Pontus Hultén—den moderna konstens anförare (Albert Bonniers Förlag). The book received rave reviews and garnered significant attention, earning a nomination for the 2022 August Prize, the Swedish Academy’s Axel Hirsch Prize for Best Biography/Life Story 2022–23, and the Royal Library’s Swedish Book Art Award for Best Visual Design in 2023. The book is based on extensive research, including more than two hundred interviews conducted in eleven countries. In 2025, I published the English edition of the book under the title Pontus Hultén—Commander of Modern Art (Verlag der Büchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Cologne/CCS Bard, New York). The book has generated significant attention in the global art world.
I am currently working on several books, including a voluminous literary autobiographical “gonzo-picaresque” novel that I began writing back in 2008. For more than thirty years, I have been actively involved in public discourse, particularly in the fields of architecture, urban planning, and urban development.
On this website, I will be regularly publishing new texts, images, videos, a podcast, and more. Welcome!
