Peter Fisher was born in Sheffield, and was educated there and later at Oxford, where he read Classics and English. He continued as a teacher in these subjects in Welwyn Garden City and subsequently as a lecturer at what is now Anglia Ruskin University. Since the late 1970s he has translated and published a number of historical texts from Medieval and Renaissance Latin, mainly from Scandinavia. He is a keen amateur clarinettist and regularly plays in local chamber groups and orchestras, with whom he has performed several concertos.