Martin Calder

Martin Calder was born in the small market town of Ormskirk, on the south Lancashire plain, growing up nearby in a landscape of big skies and rich black soil. He attended Merchant Taylors’ School in Crosby, then went to read Civil Engineering and Architecture at the University of Leeds, almost beginning a career as an engineer, but instead took himself off to the south of France, where he picked the grapes for the renowned old sparkling wine Blanquette de Limoux. The experience inspired him to change direction, he did a degree in French, then a Masters and a PhD, becoming Senior Lecturer in French Language and Literature at the University of Bristol, a post he held for twelve years.

His travel memoir "A Summer in Gascony" recreates one enchanting summer in the South of France. It has been translated into Polish and Estonian.

Storytelling, he says, should be about giving people something to enjoy, something to remember, something to inspire.

His book "Encounters with the Other" is a literary-historical voyage philosophique. He contributed the chapter on the Abbé Prévost to "Les Lumières européennes" and the entry on 'Language' to the "Encyclopedia of Modern French Thought". His last book in the academic domain was a volume on English and European landscape gardens, "Experiencing the Garden in the Eighteenth Century", with contributions from garden historians from around the world.

He lives in Dorset near the sunny south coast.