Faith memoir and honest writing for evidence-minded readers – people who want the account to stand up, not just sound good.
I’m a project management consultant from Swindon. A husband, a father of six, and for most of my life, not a believer. I spent years trusting evidence, process, and things I could verify – and then found myself asking questions I couldn’t put down.
In early 2026 I was baptised, alongside my wife, at St Philip’s in Upper Stratton. My first book tells the story of how that happened – plainly, honestly, and without asking the reader to take anything on trust that I didn’t have to.
A first-person account of a conversion nobody saw coming, least of all me. Written for the reader who is sceptical by nature – because I was one. No pressure, no polish, just what actually happened and the questions that got me there.
Out now
Nobody tells you what happens after the baptism.
In The Unexpected Path to Faith, Scott Gough told the story of how a committed agnostic atheist who was comfortable, evidence-minded, and not searching for anything yet found his way to the water. This is the story of what the water asked of him next.
The second year of faith has no map. It is the year a new belief has to learn to live in an ordinary life: to survive a family holiday, to sit through a committee meeting, to answer a grieving friend, to hold the questions that never quite close. And it is the year, if you are anything like the author, that faith stops being only something you receive and starts becoming something you are asked to carry for other people.
Told with the same plain honesty as the first book, this is a true account of an ordinary man’s second year as a believer: a church fête, a theology course, a parish that kept opening doors he hadn’t knocked on, and the slow, unmistakable discovery that he was being handed work to do. The doubts are kept in. The pride and the stumbles are kept in. Nothing is tidied.
For the new believer wondering what comes next. For the sceptic who wants to see whether faith survives contact with real life. And for anyone who suspects that a calling doesn’t arrive with trumpets, it arrives looking like a job that needs doing.
Coming soonAlongside the books, I’ll be publishing shorter pieces here – reflections on faith, doubt, and the questions that started it all.
St Philip’s is the Church of England parish church for Upper Stratton, Swindon – and the place where much of this story happened. Sunday service is at 11am on Beechcroft Road, and everyone is welcome, wherever you are with faith. It’s where I was, when I first walked in.
If the book helped you, made you think, or left you with a question – I’d like to hear from you. That’s the whole reason it exists.
Email me