Like his fictional character Smith, Anthony Coles retired a few years ago to Arles in the South of France after a career that combined two somewhat different directions.  Like Smith, he is an art historian and did indeed teach the subject in universities on both sides of the Atlantic.  His specialities were medieval architecture and early twentieth century European painting.  Unlike Smith, his second career was a long way from anything clandestine being much more prosaically in international business.

Apart from working on the next Smith story, other current writing projects include the completion of a major monograph on John Heartfield, the German anti-Nazi photomontage cartoonist who worked primarily during the nineteen twenties and thirties.  This was published in  2014.  He is also doing research for a more “serious” novel on everyday life in Arles under the German occupation between November 1942 and August 1944.

Again like Smith he lives in a small house near the Roman Amphitheatre in Arles where he concentrates on writing, reading, cooking and trying not to drink too much.  He does indeed have two adult daughters and a retired track greyhound called Arthur.  All further similarity with Peter Smith stops there.