Garry John Martin

G.J.Martin's magnum opus, his ‘Orcadian Trilogy’ was launched in the Orkney Library and Archive in Kirkwall in June 2019. The result of ten years research and six years writing, the books imagine the adventures of the Dons of Westray, an improbable, hybrid race, made up of nervous, oppressed islanders and a ship's boat full of strangers cast aside at the furthest edge of a war. The stories span the years from the last days of the Spanish Armada to the end of the Scottish earls’ dominion over the northern isles. This was a time when the Thames froze over, the Hansa towns declined, the Spanish empire dissolved and the age of chivalry died. Led by a young Spanish lord, full of ideals and memories of honour, the Dons of Westray dare all; determined to survive.

The Boy Who Made God Smile, Writing East Midlands Mentoring Prize 2013.

A radio interview given in 2005 shows him as an active and engaged teacher working on directing an imaginative school performance of Look Back in Anger.

By the time To Weave a Rainbow was published (1986) he was running a bookshop as well as the restaurant while spending his free time writing. This, his first novel was well received, ‘Garry Martin writes with a rare incisiveness, coupled with the ability to reflect the very ordinary happenings of day-to-day life with remarkably keen perception.’

On graduation he was selected to take part in a BBC documentary charting the lives of graduates. This was followed up a decade later in 1980 with a programme in which Martin discussed his novel To Weave a Rainbow, then under the working title Snake or Snapdragon. By this time he had already worked in the City as a systems analyst and taken a year long trip halfway round the world by yacht (a journey he documented in a series of articles for Yachting and Boating Weekly) worked as a teacher at Brentwood School, Essex and at King Edward's School, Birmingham. At the time of the 1980 interview he was planning to open a restaurant, ‘Blythe’s’, in Coleshill.

Garry John Martin (born 1948 in Burton upon Trent) is a British novelist. He attended the local grammar school and art college and went on to read English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.