Bestselling author Peter James tells Arabella Youens why he’s fallen in love with his new home on Jersey
IT’S hard to imagine that, with his nearly 40 years as a crime-fiction writer, with 19 million books sold globally in 37 different languages, Peter James could have embraced a different career. However, were it not for the support of an English master at Charterhouse, the author of the popular ‘Roy Grace’ series, due to hit TV screens next year, might never have considered writing.
‘I don’t have particularly happy memories of school, but David Summerscale, who went on to become headmaster of Westminster, encouraged me to enter a short-story competition, which I then won,’ he explains. ‘I honestly don’t think I’d have succeeded as a writer without that important start.’
His first properwriting job came a few years later. When, working on a children’s TV series in Toronto, the scriptwriter failed to turn up. Peter was asked to fill in on the spot.
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