Peter Mayle

Peter Mayle ( "mail"; 14 June 1939 – 18 January 2018) was a British businessman turned author who moved to France in the 1980s. He wrote a series of bestselling memoirs of his life there, beginning with '' A Year in Provence'' (1989).

Early life

Born in Brighton, Sussex, the youngest of three children, Mayle and his parents moved to Barbados in the aftermath of World War II, where his father was transferred as a Colonial Office employee. Mayle returned to England after leaving school at 16 in Barbados.

Advertising career

His first job in 1957 was as a trainee at Shell Oil, based in its London office. It was there that he discovered that he was more interested in advertising than oil and he wrote to David Ogilvy, the head of the advertising agency that had the Shell account at that time, asking for a job. Ogilvy offered him a job as a junior account executive, but Mayle's interest was more on the creative side of the business and he subsequently became a copywriter in 1961 based in its New York City office.

In due course another agency, Papert Koenig, Lois, poached him from Ogilvy and sent him back to London to head up the creative team in its UK office, where one of his colleagues was Alan Parker. When the US parent hit trouble in the mid-1960s, he and a colleague bought the London operation. They developed the business with accounts that included Watneys, Olivetti, and Sony and after five years, it was bought by BBDO, one of the top American agencies. He then commuted between the U.S. and the UK as its creative director.

A 1972 advertising slogan written by Mayle for Wonderloaf Bread was used as a football chant by supporters of Tottenham Hotspur, and became the basis of the song "Nice One Cyril".

By 1974, Mayle had had enough of advertising and transatlantic commuting, and quit the business to write full-time.

Author

Mayle started off by writing educational books, including a series on sex education for children and young people. He also penned, in collaboration with illustrator Gray Jolliffe, a series of humorous books about the character Wicked Willie, based upon a personification of the male organ. He relocated from Devon to the Luberon, southern France, in the late 80s but his plans to write a novel were overtaken by an account of life in his new environment. This resulted in his 1989 book '' A Year in Provence'' which became an international bestseller, chronicling his first year as a British expatriate in Ménerbes, a village in the southern ''département'' Vaucluse
** ''French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Fork, and Corkscrew'' was adapted for audio cassette
** ''A Good Year'' was adapted to film
** ''What's Happening to Me?'' adapted as animated video
** ''Where Did I Come From?'' adapted as animated video

References and notes

External links

Peter Mayle.com
(unofficial)
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Mayle, Peter

1939 births
2018 deaths
20th-century British novelists
British Book Award winners
British expatriates in France
British travel writers
Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur
Children's non-fiction writers
People from Brighton