Peter Saunders was born and educated in Croydon, England. He spent more than twenty years teaching sociology at the University of Sussex, where he still holds the title of Professor Emeritus. He also taught in universities in Australia, New Zealand, Germany and the United States.
He built an international academic reputation with books on city life, home ownership, social inequality and meritocracy, but in 1999 he abandoned his academic career and went to live in Australia to work in public policy think tanks. He continued to publish on social issues such as poverty and welfare reform, but he also began commenting on current affairs in the press and on radio and television. By the time he returned to Britain in 2008, the Sydney Morning Herald hailed him as 'the most prominent liberal intellectual' in Australia.
He is now developing another new career, as a fiction writer. The Versailles Memorandum is his first full-length novel.

'He has been the most prominent liberal intellectual in Australia, combining strong opinions with considerable talent as a writer and radio guest' (Sydney Morning Herald, June 14 2008)

"Peter Saunders is possibly the most important liberal intellectual in Australia… He is the antithesis of an Ivory Tower intellectual. He did the research and wrote the books, but he was also contantly engaged in the battle of ideas in the broadsheet media, the ABC and public debate. More than that, Peter didn't just talk the talk. He did it with humour, wit and style. He critiques clichés about class, but he's a class act" (ABC Radio National Counterpoint, 9 June 2008)

"It's hard to turn a newspaper page without hearing from the relentless libertarian, Peter Saunders. A former professor of sociology at the University of Sussex, Saunders uses spare and stylish English to mow down paddocks of sacred cows" (The Australian, 23 May 2008)

New novel published October 2009: The Versailles Memorandum (a political thriller set 30 years in the future) - more information at www.theversaillesmemorandum.com (see link below)

Peter Saunders personal web site
After 9 years living and working in Australia, Peter Saunders returned to the UK in June 2008 to work as a freelance researcher and independent writer of fiction and non-fiction. Examples of his work can be found on this web site.

The Versailles Memorandum
Web site linked to the new political thriller by Peter Saunders, 'The Versailles Memorandum'. The year is 2046. Across the United States of Europe, millions live under Sharia law in Special Islamic Zones. Four European cities have been contaminated by radioactivity from dirty bombs. In the Middle East, Israel has been incinerated by nuclear war. In the East London Special Islamic Zone, Aisha Sharizi is on the run from the religious police after having an affair with a kuffar boy. In Sydney, the body of a former cabinet minister is fished out of the harbour. And at the University of the South Coast, failed historian Harry Davidson has just stumbled on a secret that the security services on both sides of the Atlantic are desperate to protect.