About Peter Merrens

It takes some time to prise out the elements of Peter's past that influence his writing. That his rootstock is Armenian and Jewish in equal measure might, as he puts it, have given him "a better ability to run and hide than most". That he was raised in Sri Lanka, India, Canada, Singapore and the UK might give him a broad cultural facility. That he would holiday with his parents in Moscow at the height of the Cold War but that his father was mysteriously killed in a shooting "accident" when he was 12. That in his early years he would make ends meet by gathering up discarded vegetables from a west London street market, but subsequently built a career that led him to work in 12 countries, learn French, Danish, German, Portuguese and Japanese and live in Denmark, the USA and France. These elements combine to create a rare comfort with multiple cultures.

Today, Peter lives in a self-built home in the middle of a bluebell wood in rural Kent, the wannabe Napa valley of the UK, and can be found sharpening axes, carrying trees and foraging when not obsessively researching some new topic. He is married to Hannah who is, thank Phanes, a merciless editor.