Pete Davies (1) (1959–)

Pete Davies is the author of eleven works of fiction and non-fiction, variously published in the UK, the USA, Italy and Japan. He is forty-four years old, and lives with his wife and two children in West Yorkshire, England.

After studying English Literature & Language at Oxford, Davies worked as a cocktail barman for nine months of 1980-81 in a London nightclub owned by Richard Branson. He then wrote advertising copy for two and a half years - the only salaried employment in his life - before flying to Morocco in the spring of 1984 to write his first novel at the age of 25.

He’d actually written two other novels before this, one as a student, and another in the gap between nightclub and ad agency - but by his own admission, both were unreadably bad. It was the discipline learnt whilst writing copy that made the difference, and Davies maintains to this day that any one week in that ad agency was more useful to him as a writer than all of his three years at Oxford.