Author Peter Massam discusses memory, education, cultural exchange, and the role of observation in nonfiction writing. His Letters from Gilgil 1, recognised in the 2026 BREW Nonfiction Book Excellence Award Travel category, reflects on lived experiences in Kenya and the process of reconstructing personal history through narrative and reflection.

Could you introduce yourself, share your background, and tell us about the kind of work you do and what you hope to achieve through your writing?

Peter ‘Palindrome’ was one of the names my more studious school friends had for me. Too much of a mouthful at that age, but its Greek roots, meaning ‘running back’, hold more significance for me now as I find myself running back over past experiences and recounting them in the most evocative way that I can, to take the reader back with me, right there by my side.

My love of English began there, particularly in the sixth form with an inspirational schoolmaster, Mr R.V. Weight. It was accompanied at that time by a love of French and was followed by a fascination with other languages, their cultures, and histories.

Experience has formed the basis of my working career, either encouraging young minds to explore and verbalise experiences as a schoolmaster or by making a customer’s experience in business sectors the best it can be.

After work had finished, I couldn’t wait to put pen to paper, metaphorically speaking, as typing is so much faster. The aim is always to help people in some way, to let them know they are not alone in their experiences or their thoughts. By sharing challenges, indulging in lighter moments, laughing at yourself, highlighting difficulties encountered and decisions made that turn out to be seminal moments — all of these can help redirect focus, direction, and bring about meaningful change, even when obstacles are put in your way.

The latest trilogy, Letters from Gilgil, has that kind of practical focus to help an extraordinary individual who cared enough about children escaping a capital city that was experiencing riots and mounting violence in 2007–08. She took children off the streets, clothed, fed, and educated them, and now has a staff looking after 83 children, 21 of whom have passed on to university at home in Africa and abroad.

Regrettably, this superb facility, along with 902 other children’s ‘homes’ (for want of a better term), is slated to be closed by 2032 unless the government of that country can be persuaded to reprieve those establishments that are actively enabling and promoting their children’s futures.

This is one of the responsibilities that authors carry: to bring perspective to a perceived crisis, question self-appointed authorities that do not stand up to scrutiny, and suggest alternative solutions based on sound real-world evidence.

Writing can be powerful in its persuasive tones or abused by the powerful to meet their own intransigent, short-term ends. Challenge is a constant.

In a world where truth is sometimes hard to come by, the art of truthful storytelling must be nurtured and cherished.

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What inspired you to document your experiences in a reflective, memoir-style format, and how did that process begin?

Inspiration and reflection go hand in hand in many ways. On later visits to my old school buildings, I could now point to the inscription by the school’s founder above the main entrance that requires the schoolmaster to “trayne up the Children… in Good Literature and Vertuous Education for the avoideing of Idleness”. All capitalisations duly noted.

However, that would not have been given a second glance on a packed school day. So the inspiration comes back to the teachers and the reflection I was happily reminded of during the same revisit just three years ago.

Sitting in the very classroom where English was described aptly to us as ‘a way of life’, you look out onto a majestic Himalayan Cedar (Cedrus deodara) that dominates the view from the first-floor windows.

Captivated by its towering canopy and ageless beauty, you cannot help but contemplate how many other hundreds of thousands of pupils must have looked at or sat beneath its shade over the centuries before.

With the Letters from Gilgil, those two coinciding states of reflection first and inspiration second came on a visit back to the house where I was born and a specific memory.

On the mantel shelf, stacked neatly behind one candlestick at my mother’s end of the fireplace, stood a considerable wad of blue airmail letters. A nervous glance in that direction confirmed they were in serious danger of pushing the candlestick off its perch at the least provocation. These were letters written to both parents with the express intent of conveying the sights, sounds, and impressions of a new country. My father had visited South Africa during his RAF training, but neither had gone further than the Isle of Wight, the honeymoon location considered to be ‘abroad’ for most folks.

Sadly, these airmail letters vanished into thin air, and I was left with the prospect of reconstructing them with only my memory and the help of about 500 slides that had lain in a wooden chest undisturbed ever since.

The process was involved. Converting the slides to digital format was the first undertaking, capably performed by a company in Gloucestershire.

Secondly, there was the reconstruction of journeys, timings, and order that had, in some cases, been erased or were barely legible from the labels on the slide cassettes.

Thirdly, there was the research necessary to identify unknown species at the time the photos were taken, when the internet did not exist. In this respect, there was an exhilarating element of discovery as specific species surfaced with little past location data recorded online or that lived only in one location in the entire country.

Journeys were finally mapped to currently available map data and to tourist photos to confirm the exact routes taken and the land features that define a place and naturally do not move during our short tenure on this planet. Writing could now begin.

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Your writing often emphasizes observation and everyday moments. How do you decide which details are worth capturing and sharing with readers?

In a familiar setting in your home country, for example, you might choose an unfamiliar or unexpected encounter, a surprising event, or an observation that left a lasting impression on you.

However, in any other country, you might choose an experience that typifies a culture, is singular in nature, and stands out like beams of sunshine breaking through an otherwise overcast sky.

There is, of course, a third way which combines both of the above. An example from the Letters from Gilgil trilogy would be where a now-seasoned traveller in that country takes in his surroundings at a comfortable pace, allowing the familiar vegetation and landscape to sweep past him. A glance to the hills to his right wakens him from a stupor that makes him pull up and take in the moment as clouds tumble over cliff-face hills, reminding him of the altitude to which he’s become accustomed and largely ignores, but takes the time to marvel at nonetheless, as he knows there will come a time when he will no longer see that incredible unfolding sight.

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How did your time in Kenya influence your perspective on education, environment, and cultural exchange?

School days are so important as a basis for appreciation of what you have that others struggle for, of what is around you that has perhaps gone unnoticed, while instilling a sense of dignity and respect for all things and all peoples.

Schoolmastering in a mixed-cultural school was a privilege for both staff and pupils, who benefitted from investment in their education with facilities and grounds to match.

But then, in the early morning, you would often see local children walking single file along the roadside at a constant pace to ensure they were not late for school, which could be kilometres away from where they lived. Their beautifully colourful uniform shorts and T-shirts struck a bold statement against the sometimes parched murram verges that caused a broad smile to break out on an observer’s face.

A reality then dawned when the heights of the walkers stood out like staggered battlements on an invisible castle — one or two students were much, much older. I later learned that the cause was an intractable rule that a pupil who did not pass that year’s exams was required to repeat the year until it was passed.

A sadness takes hold of you as you put yourself in their place, shoeless and destined to tower over teachers who may have long since given up on you. Your mind is cast back to your own experience being left to the whim of a cover teacher, where abandonment seemed the path of least resistance. In my first role, I was determined never to follow that path, choosing instead a different role model from around 350 BC.

If a child fails to understand something, it is the fault of the teacher in not having found alternative ways to reach and trigger comprehension in a pupil’s mind. Their task is to keep on finding different ways until the penny drops. As the quote from Plato above my classroom door reminded me every day:

“Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”

For me too, every child is a genius waiting to be discovered. It just takes time and patience.

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Many readers find your work both descriptive and contemplative. How do you balance storytelling with reflection in your writing process?

The writing has to encompass the stimulus of the senses with the thoughts that accompany them. Both mind and body respond.

Sometimes the same responses will have been recognised in the reader before the words on the page arrive. At other times, I imagine the reader will have different and better responses. If that promotes discussion or causes readers to write down their own thoughts, then so much the better.

A purely descriptive narrative is like looking at a picture in an art gallery. It can be inspiring when expressions on faces convey how the subjects felt at the time, or it can be a plain array of colours without a clear direction for the observer. Even in the latter case, most would likely be looking for the message the painting is portraying, overtly or more subtly. Just as with poetry, if the message becomes over-convoluted or disguised, then the intention and therefore the meaning are lost.

The balance to be struck, I suppose, is one of engagement in a tale that moves forwards while pausing to appreciate the mind’s capacity for thinking in all directions at once.

Pauses and silence are much underrated.

Some films can leave you exhausted as they hurtle from titles to credits at breakneck speed with precious little time to breathe. Those that deliberate too much or too often have us fidgeting in our seats.

I am in awe of scriptwriters, cinematographers, directors, and producers who manage to adapt a book for film in a way that respects the silences and contemplation expressed in shared thoughts. Not all do this successfully.

Lastly, reflection can come after the fact. In the process of re-creation, the intervening decades inevitably bring change. Sometimes for the better; at other times, they highlight the need to understand how once-thriving cultures can be overturned or their way of life disrupted to the extent that their culture stands on the brink of evanescence.

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Your book has been recognized as a recipient of a BREW Nonfiction Book Excellence Award 2026. Could you share your perspective on this recognition and what it means to you?

Recognition, in some ways, represents striking the right balance referred to above.

I am always impressed by the number of books written in any one month or year. That is monumentally encouraging.

Yours is but one view of the world. The more people that write, the rounder the perspectives become on any single topic or issue. There will always be counterarguments and those who disagree with a perspective, especially as it ages over time. I will always try to write something that lasts, that is not bound by personalities, governments, or decades, but which can be picked up a hundred years from now and still strike a chord with readers.

The truth of real life will always shine through and persist.

These awards also recognise a useful contribution that can help others. Whether intrinsic within the work or explicit outside of it, the goal should be plain to see or reveal itself during the course of the story.

Both trilogies have a general audience that hopefully speaks to most age groups, but there is also a specific audience that they hope to help. Those are explained in both sets of introductions.

The final desired outcome of the recognition is that, in the retelling of a myriad of experiences, we inspire each other to record things that are important to us, leave nothing unsaid that ought to be said, and conserve what deserves to be heralded and not forgotten.

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Across your body of work, you’ve explored different forms, including poetry and technical writing. How do these different styles inform one another?

No matter the genre, the aim is the same:

To help an audience understand experiences at a different level, overcome fear of making the wrong decision, allay fears of reprisal or repercussions that too often hold us back from our true selves, and, through sharing those experiences, become stronger and more confident individuals capable of extraordinary things if we put our minds to it.

Putting your mind to work, writing or otherwise, is sometimes thought of as a foreign concept in a world driven by facts, science, and meticulous scrutiny of results and actions to the nth degree.

The technical writing piece was there to help two contrasting domains understand each other’s domain, not be afraid to apply similar techniques to achieve a common goal of improving a customer’s experience. Readers of that book must put their minds to work but without having to understand everything — just enough to work on the common goal, a circumstance where a little knowledge can indeed be beneficial rather than dangerous.

Putting your mind to work in reading poems also does not require you to understand everything in front of you. The aims in the introduction will help set the scene and point you in the right direction.

In Reflections in a Country Garden, this meant allowing your mind to wander to your own garden and delve deeper into the choices you made in planting, some of which may have had special significance from your youth, from family days, or from events in your own history. Everyone has a history, and this is the moment to pause and take stock of the environment you have created.

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What challenges and discoveries did you encounter while revisiting past experiences and translating them into written narratives?

With Letters from Gilgil, most challenges revolved around the re-creation of memories from slides and the instances they recalled on viewing them again and, of course, piecing together a timeline of safaris and other excursions into the remarkably varied country that is Kenya.

As alluded to above, there were some startling discoveries to be had during that process, discoveries only made possible with the advent of technology and with the posting of visitor images of the same locations from more recent times at or near those I visited.

One discovery was a butterfly that I had snapped, recognising that it was a type of swallowtail but nothing more than that. Neither of the two books I managed to pick up from a garage sale related to butterflies, so I was completely in the dark.

On doing the preparatory research, it was found to be a subspecies of the Regal Swallowtail (Papilio rex rex) that only frequents the east side of the Rift Valley, where my accommodation and garden were located, hosting the same magnificent species.

With one eye on biodiversity and the other on sharing material that may help understand species better, the second discovery was of an Ader’s duiker, a small African deer of which very little is known. At the time of writing, the only image available online was a drawing or artist’s impression of what one looks like, and the information tells of its confinement to a small coastal area in the south-west of the country, where its sanctuary was thought to be found.

However, my image tells a different story, albeit from three decades ago. It is taken on the foothills of a vast stratovolcano thought once to have been the largest volcano in Africa, many times larger than the current two peaks. The mountain’s base spreads over 4,000 square kilometres, crossing two countries’ borders, from mid-west Kenya into Uganda and only 100 kilometres from the Rift Valley’s western edge.

Its given name is Mount Elgon (Ol Doinyo Ilgoon to the Maasai), and it is sanctuary to other woodland species including forest elephants, forest hogs, and colobus monkeys. It is a mountain with a history, and the calm of its grassed-over forest tracks is enchanting and ageless. Having camped there on more than one occasion, I am convinced it would be the perfect place to hide for a critically endangered species among nine others recorded.

Translating these memories into narratives had to preclude any omniscient narrator aspect looking back with hindsight. It needed to be faithful to the original airmail letters that knew nothing about them. My ignorance was bliss.

Any revelation was safely left to the epilogue, assuming the reader did not possess the same bizarre reading technique I used to apply to newspapers many decades ago. I always began at the end and worked backwards.

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Looking back on your journey as a writer, what milestones or achievements stand out to you, and how have they influenced your direction?

The journey, such that it is, has been partly about a realisation of the restrictions placed on you by a publisher, which may go against an author’s requirements or expectations.

From a time in 2003 when a known publisher of technical writing was a preferred option, to self-publishing poetry and the last trilogy, I’ve made mistakes along the way. Before I turned to self-publishing for the poetry edition, I had learned that people with ADHD or dyslexia prefer to read words on a blue or green background rather than the harsher white pages most books contain. So that volume was printed on green pages, and the later trilogy Letters from Gilgil was published on blue pages, to mirror the airmail letter colour as well as make it accessible to all readers.

The first Learning Experience trilogy went back to a publisher, believing that it may fare better in that country from a recognised publisher. I was wrong. It was restricted to being published on white pages, which was disappointing.

In spite of the publishing direction changing, these last two trilogies have garnered a total of eighteen awards and set a standard that I want to continue.

Of the awards received to date, the first one in 2022 with Nipper was a major boost for a new author, but the Readers’ Choice Book of the Month for Know Your Mind and both Letters from Gilgil 1 and 2 in 2025 raised the bar in terms of recognition by readers themselves.

Even to have five books nominated for Book of the Year in the same year (2025) was astounding, and I counted myself fortunate to be among their number.

Most recently, Nipper and now Letters from Gilgil 1 have been awarded category winners for Memory, Storytelling, and Travel, which is a different type of recognition that is much appreciated.

The influence of such awards is confirmation that a truthful account is worth recording and that, as a result, integrity will permeate the pages and resonate more strongly with your readers.

Direction is a personal choice but should not be limited to a single format to mimic the last. The subject you choose will determine the best format.

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Your work touches on themes such as learning, environment, and cultural understanding. How do you see these themes evolving in your future projects?

We live in a fragile world. Truth is at a premium and trust is at an all-time low. It is down to all of us as writers to continue to relate to people of all ‘tribes’, if I may use that collective noun most generally.

Everyone has a voice, ears to listen, and a mind to influence the next generation.

It is important they know our values in relation to the environment, that we understand what the planet needs from us, and that we are willing to go the extra thousand miles to achieve it.

It is important for all to understand that learning never stops and that understanding cultures beyond our own enriches everyone’s lives and values collaboration rather than conflict.

With these as a sound base, future works will address difficult, sometimes uncomfortable issues but with purpose and a clear strategy that defines us all as human beings and that respects common values.

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If you were to write your own bio, what would you say? And as your work evolves, what kind of impact do you hope it has?

When given a second chance at anything, be it education or life, when the opportunity is placed in front of you — grab it with both hands.

That may well sound like an epitaph rather than a bio, but the approach and aim are the same. Mine might look something like this:

Local village boy, trusted by his primary school headmistress, who gave him a chance to prove she was right. He did his best and was fortunate enough to be accepted into university doing what he loved best — languages.

This set him on a path to wanting to immerse himself more in the cultures, customs, and natural wisdoms gleaned over millennia, expressed in their local tongues. Some phrases are just better in another language and have no real equivalent in a mother tongue.

Lesson learned: Be humble and accept someone else says and does it better than you.

Finding a mission or missions in life is important and most, like me, will not have a clue to start with. No matter. It comes to you out of the blue or with an experience that leaves you cold and wanting to resolve or fix it.

Advice to self: Do it and don’t look back.

As work tends to come and go, maintaining momentum is key. Finding other missions to initiate or get behind is fulfilling.

This lad’s now embedded in a community that cares and that he wants to make better for wildlife, biodiversity, and planning officers, making compromises but preserving the natural and historical landscapes surrounding us. We have but one world, one mission, and one chance. Let’s do it.

Book Review: Letters from Gilgil 1 by Peter Massam