I never felt totally 100% patriotically English... I'd seen a lot of the world by an early age - sort of spent a lot of time traveling around Lebanon and I'd seen Babylon and Damascus and all sorts of places in the Middle East by the time I was ten. Then we'd return to Ruslip in West London... Done a fair bit of traveling really.
Information and inspiration are everywhere... history art architecture everything an illustrator needs. Europe is after all the land that has generated most of the enduring myths and legends of Western culture.