Peter Ormerod

Join Peter on DO Radio: Where To Next? with Mike Warwick from 13 to 19 April.

Peter Ormerod is a writer and cultural observer whose work explores how spirituality, art, and everyday life shape our search for meaning.

With over twenty years’ experience in journalism, he has written widely, including for The Guardian, on subjects ranging from popular culture to religion, often questioning the assumptions that sit beneath both.

The son of a Church of England vicar, Peter grew up embedded in community life, moving through parishes shaped by both deprivation and deep connection.

His early experiences, in a working-class estate in Swindon, left a lasting imprint, giving him a keen awareness of inequality, opportunity, and the unseen forces that shape whose voices are heard and whose are not.

In recent years, Peter has become increasingly interested in the limits of certainty. Having spent time writing opinion-led journalism, he now finds himself drawn less to fixed positions.

This approach comes through in his recent book on David Bowie, where he traces Bowie’s creative life as a form of spiritual searching. For Peter, Bowie’s most vital work emerges not from certainty, but from a willingness to explore, to doubt, and to continually remake himself in response to the unknown.

Across his writing and reflections, Peter returns to a simple but powerful idea - that by loosening our grip on answers, we open ourselves to something more alive, more curious, and perhaps more true.