Martin Goodman was born in Leicester, Middle England, in 1956, and in the 1960s he was already a regular summer visitor to the Tangiers of Paul Bowles. He left school to take a sales job in Berlin, crossing the wall for visits with friends in the East at weekends. He has worked in China, Saudi Arabia, Italy, the Netherlands, Thailand and Qatar; founded Scotland's premier video publishing business; toured as a professional actor; worked bars as an organist and pianist; and run a mobile music sales exhibition. An intimate of some of the day's top spiritual leaders, a pilgrim to many of the sacred places around the globe, he has also walked through civil war zones of Eastern Turkey and Sri Lanka, smoked hashish with bandits in East Bengal, taken psychedelics with Amazonian shamans, and visited remote refugee camps and relief projects.