Andy Martin

Andy Martin is a writer who has written a lot about other writers, philosophers and surfers. And at least one emperor. His first book, The Knowledge of Ignorance, was published while he was a junior research fellow at King’s College, Cambridge. After studies of Jules Verne and Napoleon, he found gainful employment as a surfing correspondent while carrying out the research (in Hawaii) that would result in his ‘cult classic’, Walking on Water. He went on to dive into the darker side of surfing in Stealing the Wave. His surfing trilogy was completed some years later by Surf, Sweat and Tears, which investigates the mysterious death of his old friend Ted Deerhurst.

Andy has been awarded a Norman Mailer fellowship and a fellowship at the Cullman Center, New York. He has taught modern languages at universities in the UK and the US and given philosophy lessons on Japanese television and at Sing Sing prison, where the existentialist one-liner ‘Hell is other people’ proved popular. The closest he has come to writing a thriller is his double-barrel study of the works of Lee Child, Reacher Said Nothing and With Child. He may be the first writer in history to write a book about a guy writing a book, in real time, in the same room.

His highest accolade is the time a Hollywood producer told him, ‘Andy, this is better than Gatsby’. He is a season ticket holder at West Ham United and has a film script, Dream House, ‘in development’.

Audio from Andy Martin