Peter Burden has been a successful writer for 20 years. His most recent publication, News of the world? Fake Sheikhs & Royal Trappings, has stirred up controversy by exposing the methods of those who make a living exposing others. His writing career has traversed a variety of genres, with books in his own name and many more ghost-written and in the names of others.

Peter was born in Surrey, into a family with a strong thespian/literary gene. His luminary family members include Percy Bysshe Shelly, Mrs. Patrick Campbell and Bea Lilly. His childhood was anything but static, and Peter’s family moved around to various places before he was sent off to boarding school. Peter was an outstanding student, and his special talents lay in smoking in the college woodland, engaging with local females and playing guitar in an appalling yet inexplicably popular band.

Abandoning education at the age of 16, Peter went to work in the modern industrial iconic metropolis that is Slough, in the very offices of ICI that would later become infamous as the offices where David Brent ruled. Unsurprisingly, this did not prove sufficiently stimulating for a youthful Peter, and he left to throw himself into a new job in the mayhem of the swinging soixants. Following stints in interior design, fashion and audio-publishing, Peter found himself contemplating an idea for a book based around the rag trade. This idea, a book called Rags, made it onto the Sunday Times bestseller list and earned enough for Peter to persuade his wife to move with him Herefordshire with their first son, Edward.

Here, in the bucolic depths of the Marcher country, Peter wrote a series of novels for Hodder & Stoughton, and was noticed by former Champion Jockey, John Francome, who asked if he’d like to work with him on his series of race-track thrillers. Following eight of these, and one quality pot-boiler for Bloomsbury’s Soldier of Fortune series, Peter collaborated with Jenny Pitman on three very successful titles. Peter also worked on autobiographies with David Hemmings and Leslie Philips.

After 20 years of living in Herefordshire, where he witnessed the births of his daughter Alice and and second son Archie, Peter moved to the wonderful mediaeval hill town of Ludlow in Shropshire, where he still lives.

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