Peter was born in London. He lives near Cambridge with his best friend and partner, Jill. Their family has twelve members, scattered around England and Scotland. Peter’s first career ultimately took him all over the world serving governments as they established leadership training to improve the delivery of education to their young people. Jill is a psychologist, seeking to understand the complex relationship between behaviour and learning in young people.

In 2020 Peter retrained with Cambridge University and began writing fiction. Peter’s novels focus on identity and the joys, challenges and nuances of family life. ‘Jamila’ is his debut novel. The action of ‘Jamila’ crosses Edinburgh, Marseille and Morocco reaching forward three generations from the end of World War Two. ‘Benjamin’, a companion novel to ‘Jamila’, with the same reach, will be published in 2025. His third, ultimately optimistic novel, explores the destructive power of an abusive stepfather within a South London family, set across the turn of the twenty-first century. It will also be published next year.

Jamila, the unlawful child of a Moroccan mother, becomes a brave but naïve young woman. Within her adopted family she finds love, understanding and violence. She flees to Europe via Marseille where she falls foul of a misogynist academic from Edinburgh, Donald Lansdown. Jamila unintentionally uncovers his deceits and breaks up his career and influence. Encouraged by David, a student friend, she returns to her family on a quest to understand her own past. She realises she is pregnant. Nursing her child, Jamila searches for and finds her own mother.

‘By now she thought Donald was wonderful and she told him.
He smiled to himself because he knew he was.’
Jamila

All proceeds from the sale of ‘Jamila’ go to the UN World Food Programme – the world’s largest humanitarian organization saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity, for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change.