Peter Mayle

Peter Mayle was educated at Brighton College, England, and Harrison College, Barbados, where he developed a lifelong fondness for the sun. He left school at sixteen and returned to England, where he failed to distinguish himself as a waiter or a laundry van driver before joining Shell as a trainee. When he was 21, he moved to New York to work for David Ogilvy's advertising agency, and subsequently spent the next fifteen years in the advertising business, before leaving honest employment to become a writer.

His first book, "WHERE DID I COME FROM?" (explaining the facts of life to children) was published in 1973 and is still in print today, more than three million copies later.

He moved to Provence in 1987 with the intention of writing a novel, but the distractions of his new life interfered and the result was A YEAR IN PROVENCE. Published in 1989, the book stayed on both the London Sunday Times and The New York Times bestseller lists for three years. The book has now sold more than seven million copies in 32 languages. The sequel, TOUJOURS PROVENCE, followed in 1991.

His subsequent books -- EXPENSIVE HABITS, HOTEL PASTIS, A DOG'S LIFE, ANYTHING CONSIDERED, CHASING CEZANNE, ENCORE PROVENCE have appeared on bestseller lists in Britain, America, Germany, France and Japan. A GOOD YEAR was made into a film starring Russell Crowe and directed by Ridley Scott.  His latest work, MY TWENTY-FIVE YEARS IN PROVENCE, REFLECTIONS ON THEN AND NOW, has just been published.