Peter Grimsdale

Peter Grimsdale has worked in TV on a wide range of programmes, from The Adam & Joe Show to Crimewatch ,Big Brother and Dispatches. His first novels Perfect Night and Just Watch Me are thrillers inspired by his BBC assignments to Sri Lanka and secret filming in communist Albania.

But his latest books are non-fiction. High Performance – When Britain Ruled the Roads springs from a lifelong passion for cars. ‘I didn’t want to write a car book just for enthusiasts – I wanted to tell a true story about a band of brilliant, rebellious folk who happen to design cars, one that which the wider public might not have come across before, a piece of real social history which one way or another has touched everyone. He followed it this with Racing in the Dark - How the Bentley Boys Conquered Le Mans and Superveloce - How Italian Cars Conquered the World. Each book has delved deeper into the times and places in which designers, engineers and drivers flourished. In Superveloce he goes right back to 1900 and the dawn of the Italian car industry. 'What is so striking about the Italians is that they had had no industrial revolution like Germany, France and Britain so they had a great deal of catching up to do. And yet as early as 1907, they were winning all the big Grand Prix races and ever since they have been confounding the rest of the world with their brilliance not only at engineering but in the creation of cars of quite dazzling beauty and charm.'

Peter is married to author Stephanie Calman and lives in South London.