Martin has lived, worked and studied in the UK, Italy, France and Belgium. He is a former civil servant and currently an academic but, from an early age, the only thing he ever always wanted to do was write creative fiction. An Open University course in 2006 re-sparked the ambition and since then he has had poetry and short stories published and several plays performed. He took early retirement in 2013 so as to be able to devote himself more fully to his writing ambitions. A historian manqué, for the past ten years he has been working on an epic novel. Set in 1914–18, Other Than an Aspen Be portrays the scourge of war and the plight of refugees and the existential dilemmas created by conflict. The novel is currently on submission to publishers.

Martin currently divides his time between London (Covid-permitting), Brussels and Italy. He has been happily married to his Belgian artist wife for almost forty years. A large, eternally-young, flat-coated retriever keeps them both fit.