Peter Ridgley (1929–2017) lived a life as expansive, turbulent, and raw as the prose he left behind. Born in Hackney, London, his childhood was forged in the fires of the Blitz, surviving bombed-out schools and wartime evacuation before serving in the Royal Navy. In the postwar era, he emigrated to Australia as a “Ten-Pound Pomm,” initiating a relentless decade defined by commercial seafaring, university study, teaching at the Townsend School for the Blind and Deaf, and an intense family life.
Following a near-breakdown and a dramatic flight back to Europe, Peter Ridgley returned to London, mastered “The Knowledge,” and became an iconic London cab driver. Urged to capture his extraordinary life by friend Fred Robinson (creator of the BBC’s The Larkins), Ridgley began translating six decades of love affairs, heartbreak, global travels across five continents, and years spent between Thailand and Romania into his writing.
He self-published the first edition of Echoes from Australia in 1978, later selling the expanded 1998 edition directly to passengers from the front seat of his black cab. Following his passing in 2017, his surviving partner, Cintia, stewarded his life’s work to bring this definitive third edition to publication in London.
