Peter Maughan's early career covered many trades, working on building sites, in wholesale markets, on fairground rides and in a circus. Later he travelled the West Country, picking fruit, and sleeping wherever he could, before moving on to wherever the next road took him. After travelling to Jersey to pick potatoes, he found work in a film studio in its capital, walk-ons and bit parts in the pilot films that were made there, and as a contributing script writer. He studied at the Actor's Workshop in London, and worked as an actor in the UK and Ireland, subsequently founding a fringe theatre in Barnes, London, and living on a converted sailing barge among a small colony of houseboats on the River Medway. His idyllic, heedless years by the river, inspired him to write the Batch Magna novels, set in a peaceful river valley in the Welsh Marches. He is married and lives currently in Wales.