Peter Cox.

Peter Cox is the founder and managing director of Redhammer, and the visionary whose instinct for a great story has shaped the agency from the outset. A bestselling author of more than twenty books, a pioneering campaigner, and one of publishing’s most original thinkers, he has built a career on spotting opportunities others miss and turning bold ideas into remarkable successes. Born in Carlisle and raised in a remote village on the North Norfolk coast, he has never followed the conventional path — and that independence of mind is precisely what has made him such an effective champion for the authors he represents.

Peter’s early career revealed an entrepreneurial flair that would define everything to follow. Beginning in large-format industrial photography during the North Sea oil and gas boom, he built his company into a full-service advertising agency employing twenty-five people, with clients including Philips, Shell Expro FMC and other major names. He sold the business at just twenty-nine and moved to Manchester to become the first chief executive of the Vegetarian Society of the United Kingdom, where he transformed the organisation’s fortunes — raising its public profile, expanding its membership, and founding the celebrated Cordon Vert cookery school. Many trace the vegetarian boom of the late 1980s back to the energy he ignited during this time.

It was as an author that Peter first became a household name. His 1986 book Why You Don’t Need Meat won the Booksellers’ Association Award for the Best Non-Fiction Publicity Campaign of the Year, and following an appearance on BBC television’s Wogan seen by millions, it shot to number one on the paperback charts, selling more than 100,000 copies in the UK alone and going on to be published around the world. A friendship with Linda McCartney led to Linda McCartney’s Home Cooking, which soared to the top of the hardback charts and became one of Bloomsbury’s best-selling titles in the years before they discovered Harry Potter. He went on to write and co-write, with his wife Peggy Brusseau, more than two dozen further books on food, health and lifestyle — among them Superliving!, Peter Cox’s Guide to Vegetarian Living and the LifePoints series — many of them bestsellers, and many serialised in the national press.

Peter’s experience as a bestselling author gave him a rare, first-hand understanding of what writers need from an agent — and in 2001 he founded Redhammer, working across London and New York. His instinct for talent and his willingness to challenge industry orthodoxy have made the agency a distinctive force in publishing. His client list has included the worldwide best-selling novelist Michelle Paver, US Senator Orrin Hatch, television journalist and former MP Martin Bell OBE and many more, with film and television deals struck alongside directors of the calibre of Sir Ridley Scott.

A natural community-builder as well as a dealmaker, Peter founded Litopia®, the oldest online community for writers on the internet — something he counts among his proudest achievements, for all the talented people it has helped along the way. A keen astronomer and devoted practitioner of Ashtanga yoga, he brings to his work the same curiosity, conviction and boundless energy that have marked his whole career. For the authors fortunate enough to be represented by him, Peter offers something genuinely rare: the eye of a best-seller, the daring of an entrepreneur, and an unwavering belief in the power of a great story.