Martin Hocke (1938–2005)
Writer, actor, traveller between worlds.
Born in Cologne as the son of the art writer Gustav René Hocke and an English actress, Martin Hocke grew up in wartime England caught between the shadows of destruction and the calm of the Oxfordshire woods.
After studying acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, he lived between Germany and Italy, founding a language school in Turin before turning to fiction.

With The Ancient Solitary Reign (1989), The Lost Domain (1993) and Am an Owl (1995), he created a modern epic of rare sensitivity — an allegory of human destiny told through the life of owls.
His novels were published in the UK, Italy, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and Australia, and praised as “a magical fusion of myth and realism” (La Stampa).

Hocke’s world is one of empathy and reflection: balanced between nature and civilisation, stage and page, dream and truth.