Peter Kerr

(born - ) - born Lossiemouth, raised near Haddington, East Lothian

• Written by Peter Kerr

Life for Scotland's top travel writer began a long way from the Mediterranean island of Mallorca, where several of his bestselling books are set. And his life took him on a uniquely winding and interesting career path long before he turned his hand to earning his daily bread by writing books.

Peter was born in the Morayshire fishing village of Lossiemouth, but since early childhood has lived (on and off!) in the pretty agricultural county of East Lothian. On leaving school, he surprised those who knew his free-spirited nature by turning down the opportunity to study at Edinburgh College of Art in favour of joining the Civil Service. But, perhaps predictably, after eighteen unfulfilling months as a rookie executive officer, Peter escaped the claustrophobic safety of government employment to become a professional jazz musician. From the steadfastly secure to the precipitously precarious! After blowing his meagre savings on a clapped-out Bedford Dormobile, the 19-year-old Peter (or Pete as he was known in jazz circles) piled his seven-piece Dixieland group into the old van and headed off with his trusty clarinet for a two-month engagement in Germany.

He returned to London to join Scotland's top jazz band, the Clyde Valley Stompers, eventually taking over leadership of the 'Clydes' and recording for the celebrated Beatles producer, George Martin.

Their swinging version of Prokofiev's 'Peter and The Wolf' took the Stompers into the pop charts for the first time and launched them into a hurly-burly life of incessant touring, recording, broadcasting and regular network TV dates with such world-famous stars as Shirley Bassey, Morcambe and Wise, Brenda Lee, Petula Clark, Dusty Springfield and, ultimately, the Beatles. Concurrent film work involved the Clydes in playing the title music for the Norman Wisdom comedy romp, 'On The Beat', and in appearing with Tommy Steele in 'It's All Happening'

In the mid-sixties, Peter, now married and with a baby son, gave up this hectic lifestyle and returned to Scotland to embark on a career as a record producer in his own right.

Freelancing for several British and American labels, he went on to produce upwards of two hundred albums, working with such legendary Scottish names as Andy Stewart, Jimmy Shand, Alex Welsh and the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards. For the latter, he produced the international chart-topper 'Amazing Grace' - the biggest-selling instrumental ever, with worldwide sales of some thirteen million copies. His own musical experiences having started by learning to play the bagpipes when a young boy himself, the bagpipe-led 'Amazing Grace' seemed to see Peter's life in music come full circle.

Since 1970, Peter, coming from a farming family, had been combining his recording work with running his own farm, specialising in growing malting barley and breeding beef cattle on a 50-acre holding near the market town of Haddington in East Lothian. The recession of the early 'eighties, and its detrimental effect on the record business in particular, prompted Peter to sell up, albeit reluctantly, and to take his wife and two sons off to the Spanish island of Mallorca, where they bought a run-down orange farm and hurled themselves wholeheartedly into trying to make a living from a type of agriculture they knew absolutely nothing about! And it was this blissful ignorance that was to provide the material for the hugely successful humour-laced books that Peter now writes, finally having given up the plough for the pen.

The first of these Mallorca-based books, Snowball Oranges, became an overnight bestseller when published in 2000, and in 2002 was awarded the bronze in its category at the prestigious American Book of The Year Awards in Los Angeles. Its sequel, Mañana, Mañana, followed suit by being shortlisted for the WH Smith British Travel Book of The Year Award in that same year. Peter changed the setting, if not the mood, of his next book, Thistle Soup, which is a nostalgic, poignant-though-whimsical, account of family life in rural Scotland. The popularity of these books is steadily spreading, with editions now published in several languages.

In his following two books, Viva Mallorca! and A Basketful of Snowflakes, Peter revisited the enchanting scenes and colourful characters he introduced in Snowball Oranges. From Paella to Porridge is the fifth and last in the series about his family's Mallorcan adventures, although the island also features strongly in his first fiction release, Bob Burns Investigates - The Mallorca Connection. Even Michael Douglas, a frequent resident of Mallorca and an energetic patron of its culture, is said to enjoy Peter's stories, although they are set in a slightly more 'earthy' Mallorcan environment than that probably familiar to the Hollywood superstar.

However, ringing the scenic changes, it's Scotland, Sicily and the USA that are the settings for the second Bob Burns Investigates mystery, The Sporran Connection.

Then it's back to rural Scotland for Fiddler On The Make, the first in a projected series of quirkily-comic stories revolving round the scams of foxy farmer Jigger McCloud.

So, life for Peter has entered a fairly conventional phase at last - the quiet (sometimes!), disciplined (relatively!) life of a writer. Peter and his wife now live back in Scotland for most of the year. He lists his hobbies as 'sipping' Spanish wine, listening to music, rediscovering his long-neglected flair for drawing (Peter illustrates his own books), and enjoying the company of the family's two young Border Terrier dogs.

• Snowball Oranges - 2000
• Mañana, Mañana - 2002
• Thistle Soup - 2002
• Viva Mallorca! - 2004
• A Basketful of Snowflakes - 2005
• From Paella to Porridge - 2006
• Bob Burns Investigates - The Mallorca Connection - 2006
• The Sporran Connection - 2007
• Fiddler On The Make - 2007
• The Cruise Connection - 2008
• The Gannet has Landed - 2008