Peter Lord was born in Exeter in 1948, and now lives near Aberystwyth. Initially, he worked as a sculptor, designing several large scale public works, notably the Hywel Dda Memorial at Whitland. However, in 1986 he decided to concentrate on writing about visual culture, and since then has published some twelve studies on various aspects of the subject. These include the three volumes of The Visual Culture of Wales (University of Wales Press, 1998-2003), regarded as the standard work on the subject. In 1999 he wrote and presented a seven-part series about Welsh visual culture, The Big Picture , for BBC Wales, and he continues to interpret the subject on television and radio. He has lectured on Welsh art in Germany and the United States, where he was a visiting scholar at the British Art Center at Yale.