Born John Anthony Miller on the 25th April 1918, in Falmouth, Cornwall, he grew up in Southsea, Hampshire and was educated at Portsmouth Grammar School. At various times in his life he was a boxer, footballer, bank clerk, diver, Royal Marine, Indian Navy Lieutenant, antique dealer, schoolmaster, lecturer and author. His first novel, Banking on Form, was published and reprinted by Robert Hale in March, 1962, when he was forty-four, but his sense of humour won him a national liteary competition when he was only nine. His pen name was from his mother as she was born a Pook and came from a Portsmouth family which had its origins in Devon.

Although he has used his own background to impart authenticity to his novels, his characters are fictitious insofar as they do not reflect any single person in his or her entirety. Often they are a composite of several quite different people, who, once created, develop a personality uniquely their own. Honners is a good example of this.

Peter wrote his own blurbs (i.e. description of the book printed on the inside and the biographical details printed on the back of the jacket).

His wife the author Val Manning wrote that " He also enjoyed a lasting amour with historical London and the literary giants who flourished there. One of those was William Shakespeare who had established himself as a playwright of some esteem in London by the time he was twenty-five and whose works delighted Peter's language palate. Dickens' London and in particular 48 Doughty street where Dickens lived from 1837 — 39, reaped many of his leisure hours and he could quote at random from Dickens' works with fluent ease. It is also an interesting fact that Peter's father was born opposite Dickens' birthplace at Portsmouth. Peter never tired of the old city walks, St Paul's, the churches, the bridges, the inns, the Thames and the quaint streets with names to conjure delicious imageries of a historic populace. He courted them all.