Peter Watson was born in 1943. He was educated at Cheltenham Grammar School and the Universities of Durham (Psychology Prize), London, and Rome (Italian Government Music Scholarship).
After postgraduate work at London University he was an intern for two years at the Tavistock Clinic in London. This led to his first book (as editor), Psychology and Race, (Penguin Books, London and New York, 1973). He then became founder editor of Race Today, the journal of the Institute of Race Relations.
In 1969 he joined New Society. Two years later he moved to The Sunday Times, where he remained until 1981. During that time he was Home Affairs Correspondent, Education Correspondent, and a member of the 'Insight' investigative team. He covered stories in Israel, Jamaica, Japan, the United States, the Portugese revolution, Haiti, Honduras, El Salvador, Chile and all over Western Europe.
In 1981 he joined The Times, where he wrote the daily 'Diary' column and in 1982-83 was New York correspondent.
In 1983-84, following the success of his book The Caravaggio Conspiracy (Hutchinson, London, 1983) he took a year off and remained in America to write his first novel, The Nazi's Wife.
Since then, Peter has researched and presented a number of television programmes, and written for the Observer, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Sunday Times, The New York Times and The Spectator, as well as writing a number of books. His most recent, Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud, was published by Harper Collins in the UK in 2006.
In June 1997 he was appointed Research Associate, McDonald Institute for Research in Archaeology at the University of Cambridge.
Peter also writes gripping and finely researched historical fiction, under a pseudonym.
Peter Watson speaks French and reads Italian. His interests are opera, fishing and cricket.
Bibliography:
As editor:
Psychology and Race, Penguin Books, London and New York, 1970.
As sole author:
Psychology:
War on the Mind: The Military Uses and Abuses of Psychology, Hutchinson, London, Basic Books, New York, 1978. London, Penguin Books, 1980.
Twins: An Investigation into the Strange Coincidences in the Lives of Separated Twins, Hutchinson, London, 1981, Contemporary Books, Chicago, 1981; Pan Books, London, 1984.
Art:
The Caravaggio Conspiracy, Hutchinson, London, 1983; Doubleday, New York, 1984; Penguin Books, New York, 1985.
Wisdom and Strength: The Biography of a Renaissance Masterpiece, New York, Doubleday, 1989; Hutchinson, London, 1990; London, Vintage, 1992.
From Manet to Manhattan: The Rise of the Modern Art Market, New York, Random House, 1992; London, Hutchinson, 1992; London, Vintage, 1993.
Sotheby's Inside Story, London, Bloomsbury, 1997; Random House, New York, 1997.
Novels set in the Art World
The Nazi's Wife, New York, Doubleday, 1985, London, Grafton, 1986; London, 1987.
Crusade, Hutchinson, London, 1987; Hodder Headline, 1988.
Landscape of Lies, Hutchinson, London, 1989; Macmillan, New York, 1989; Hodder Headline, 1990.
Stones of Treason, Hutchinson, London, 1991; Hodder Headline, 1992
The Stalin Picasso, Econ Verlag, Munich, 2000
Biography
Nureyev, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1994; London, Hodder Headline, 1995.
Other Novels
Capo, London, Richard Cohen Books, 1996; New York, Ballantine, 1998.
History
The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century, HarperCollins, 2001. Published in Britain as A Terrible Beauty: The People and Ideas that Shaped the Modern Mind, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000. Paperback 2002.
Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005; New York, HarperCollins. Paperback 2006.
As co-author
The Death of Hitler, with Ada Petrova, London, Richard Cohen Books, 1995; New York, W.W. Norton, 1995; New York, W.W. Norton paperback,1996.
The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities From Italy's Tomb Raiders to the World's Greatest Museums, with Cecilia Todeschini. New York and London, Public Affairs Books, 2006; paperback edition 2007.
Forthcoming:
The German Genius: How Two World Wars Have Blinded Us to What We Owe to the Land of Poets and Thinkers, HarperCollins, 2008.
The Great Divide: History and Human Nature in the Old World and the New, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009.
Peter Watson's books have been translated into twenty languages, including Hebrew, Latvian, Bulgarian, Korean, Chinese and Japanese.
TELEVISION
'The Caravaggio Conspiracy': ABC TV New York, April 1984.
'The Caravaggio Conspiracy': BBC TV 'Arena', London, April 1985
'Cobalt Blue,' Thames TV, September, 1991
'The Death of Hitler': ABC TV New York, May 1995
'Sale of the Centuries': Channel 4 Dispatches, November 1995
'Sotheby's Under the Hammer - 1': Channel 4 Dispatches, January 1997
'Sotheby's Under the Hammer - 2': Channel 4 Dispatches, February 1997
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