[1] Born in Warrington, Potter has a BSc in mathematics from King's College London and an MSc in the history and philosophy of science.

At Fourth Estate he worked closely with many writers, including Carol Shields, Annie Proulx, Michael Cunningham and Michael Chabon (all of whom won the Pulitzer Prize for novels published by Fourth Estate), Dava Sobel, Hilary Mantel, Matt Ridley, Simon Singh, Salley Vickers, Ann Patchett, James Gleick, Kate Summerscale, Kathryn Harrison, Kate Jennings, Gilbert Adair, Maureen Duffy, Paul Hoffman, Paul Bailey, Deborah Cadbury, Mark Merlis, Rupert Shelldrake, Amanda Craig, Fernanda Eberstadt and Rachel Cusk.

"A sort of commonplace book full of paradox and conflicting ideas, shocking facts and redemptive anecdotes, turbulent with two or three millennia of human thought," wrote The Guardian.

[8] His third book, The Earth Gazers,[9] was published in 2018 by Head of Zeus in the UK and Pegasus in America.

The Times described it as "A fresh and elegantly wrought account of mankind’s journey from firing lumps of jerry-rigged metal from cabbage fields to crunching around in the dust of another world.