Andy Martin (author)

Andy Martin is a British author and academic. He is a regular contributor to BBC radio programmes and sometimes writes for "The Stone" and "Opinionator" columns in The New York Times (cf "The Phenomenology of Ugly"). He has also written articles for the web broadcasting service SBS Broadcasting Group. He scripted and produced the short film "Once Upon a Time in New York" in collaboration with Moving Content and likewise "MML the Movie: Languages at Cambridge", directed by Will Frears with Norman Lomax. Both films feature original soundtracks by brothers Jack and Spencer Martin.

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Writer

Martin is the author of several books, including Stealing the Wave (Bloomsbury, 2007), Napoleon the Novelist (Polity, 2001), Waiting for Bardot (Faber and Faber, 1996) and Walking on Water (John Murray and Minerva, 1992).

Walking on Water, Martin's first book on surfing, rapidly became a cult classic and was short-listed for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, 1991.[1] Stealing the Wave: the epic struggle between Ken Bradshaw and Mark Foo was described as ‘the finest sports book I’ve ever read’ (Steve Bunce, BBC Radio) and an 'Awesome read!' (Newcastle Herald, Australia). The Telegraph newspaper hailed it as a 'terrific book'. Martin was the first surfing correspondent to The Times (London) and had the first ever surfing column in a major newspaper in Britain (the Independent on Sunday). Martin led a course in creative non-fiction at the Arvon Foundation in November 2009. Waiting for Bardot was first optioned by Working Title. It is now scheduled to be made into a feature film directed by Will Frears, with shooting to begin in the near future.

His latest book published by Simon and Schuster in 2009 is entitled Beware Invisible Cows: My Search for the Soul of the Universe .[2] The New Scientist wrote: 'For one man's wacky and profound take on the nature of reality, surf's up.' The Independent newspaper described the book as 'a fantastic intellectual voyage, a real eye-opener'.

Martin is currently working on a project entitled The Boxer and the Goalkeeper: Sartre vs Camus, due to be published by Simon and Schuster in 2012. Most recently he has collaborated on a short film called "MML the Movie" about studying languages at the University of Cambridge.

Academic life

He has been a lecturer in the department of French at the University of Cambridge since 1990. His PhD is from King's College, Cambridge, on the subject of the knowledge of ignorance. He has been an Associate Research Fellow at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis[3] and a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University. In 2009 he was awarded a fellowship at the New York Public Library. [4]

Martin was interviewed by Cambridge Varsity in the May Week issue no. 699 and described as 'something of a whispered myth amongst his many students'.

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