Yorkshire investigations journalist has been faced with guns, knives and a samurai sword but writing his debut book was 'far scarier'

Peter maintains he’s not telling anyone – not even his wife – which parts of A Corroded Soul are true. But in writing his first book, he’s turned the spotlight on himself, albeit through a fictional character called Daniel, a 50-year-old journalist.

“His mother has died, he goes back to the village where he grew up, he’s got some questionable characteristics and he goes for a last walk around the village trying to make sense of who he is and why he is,” Peter explains.

"It’s been a bit like, as an investigations journalist, turning the spotlight on myself instead of the usual criminals. It’s actually been far scarier than some of the stuff I used to do – and I’ve had guns, knives, a samurai sword pulled on me, all sorts.”

Peter largely gave up his journalism career ten years ago to pursue a lifelong ambition to write books.

In its earliest versions though, A Corroded Soul was purely personal, an attempt to make sense of his own life following the death of his mother - and was a cathartic experience by his own description.

Like his literary protagonist, Peter’s relationship with his mother was difficult. When she died from a car crash, he was consumed with anger, abandonment and feeling bereft.

Needing to make sense of his emotions, he furiously began writing, observations spat out in frustration that his mother had left him with a list of unanswered questions. As the words morphed into a novel, Peter wondered if emotional neglect could be as damaging as physical.

“Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t beaten or sexually abused in horrific circumstances like many youngsters, but it’s amazing how many people feel damaged by being raised in an unloving environment,” he says.

"Some readers have said Prince Harry expresses similar sentiments in his book. Perhaps it’s a question of where we think individual responsibility begins and ends.”

A Corroded Soul is set in a Nottinghamshire village, similar to the one in which Peter was raised and is described as a “searing self-examination”.

The first in a planned trilogy, it’s a story about morality, regret, and the perverse nature of grief as character Daniel explores family dynamics and looks to explain why he’s ended up a ‘misfit’, who is prone to stealing and is addicted to sex.

Though it is inspired by Peter’s own life, it is presented as a novel, a way of protecting people’s identities and giving him him more freedom to write creatively.

Work on book number two is now underway. “I’d like to say that will be finished in about a year,” Peter says, “but the last time I said that, it was the best part of ten years, so it might be longer,” he laughs.

Writing a book had been a dream of Peter’s from a young age, but, like many boys in his primary school class, he’d also set his sights on a career as a firefighter. That all changed when he witnessed a fire at a warehouse at the age of 11.

“We were driving back from the shops, one Saturday morning with my parents, having been dragged around Marks and Spencer and all this smoke comes over the road and all these blue flashing lights.

"This old Victorian warehouse was on fire and the police had taped it off. And these fireman came striding up with their bright yellow helmets and shiny oxygen tanks, great uniforms and big firetrucks and I’m standing there shouting ‘I want to be a fireman’.

"Then about twenty minutes later, one or two start being carried out and of course, they’re covered in soot and smoke and burns and I’m thinking maybe a fireman isn’t such a good idea.

"At which point, the police outer cordons were lifted and these smart cars roll up and these guys in suits get out and they were the press, with notebooks and pens and pencils. And I was suddenly thinking they’re getting right into the action but they’re not actually risking their lives in the way that the fireman are.

"That was pretty much the point that I thought if I’m going to have a job, I think I’m going to be a journalist…I think maybe my journalism was born out of cowardice.”

His 20-plus years of full-time work in the industry suggests any such cowardice was left behind in boyhood.

During his journalism course in London, he spent much of his second year on attachment to a local paper in the South East of the capital – “it was a pretty hardened crime area," he says – and his career has seen him go undercover time and again for numerous special investigations.

He’s had a meat cleaver, a machete and a baseball bat pulled out on him as he’s worked on hard-hitting tales.

And the Channel 4 documentary The Dying Rooms, about babies being left to die in Chinese orphanages, won him a BAFTA nomination and led to him being banned from both China and Hong Kong.

“From early on, I was attracted to longer term stories, the stories behind the headlines quite often,” he says.

“During my career, there were lots of stories – I had guns pulled on me, I negotiated with triad gangs, people smugglers…Looking back you think how did I do that? It just seems astonishing, but it was an interesting life.”

A Corroded Soul by Peter Woolrich is published by The Book Guild Publishing and is out now.