Born in East London, Peter Whitfield now lives in Oxfordshire. He was educated at an old-fashioned Grammar School and at St.Andrews University. In the book world from an early age, he was Managing Director of Stanford’s International Map Centre in the 1980s. He began his writing career in the 1990s with a series of books on the history of maps, exploration and science, before moving on to literary and philosophical topics. He has lectured on his books at the British Library, the Royal Geographical Society, the Bodleian Library and Boston Public Library. His books have been translated into several foreign languages, and produced as audiobooks by Naxos. He founded Wychwood Editions for the freedom that it gave to publish his own books.