Simon Parke studied history at Oxford and stacked shelves in a supermarket for five years. He wrote for Spitting Image (which dates him), won a Sony radio award for script writing, was a weekly columnist in the Daily Mail for four years, and has been a Church Times columnist for 10. He was a priest in the Church of England for 20 years, but these days, alongside writing the Abbot Peter murder mystery series, he’s a therapist, retreat giver, early morning runner and a great fan of silence.