[2] His father died when he was nine and he was educated at the Royal Masonic Schools for Boys in Bushey, Hertfordshire, and in vacations worked for Pearl Connor-Mogotsi, at the Edric Connor agency, which was a pioneer in promoting black theatre and the musical Hair.

Pickering attended the University of Leicester,[3] where he read Psychology and Combined Arts and participated in revolutionary politics, was a union representative, and helped found the Anti-Internment League.

[11] Charlie Peace, his next controversial novel about the second coming of Christ in modern times, drew the quote from J. G. Ballard that Pickering was 'a truly subversive author' and called the decision not to publish the book in Britain "pure censorship".

[12] After a near-fatal stabbing in the Groucho Club in 1997 that blinded him in one eye,[13] Pickering went to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the last stages of the civil war, and produced The Leopard's Wife to favourable reviews.

Pickering is a member of the Serpentine Swimming Club[19] and is a keen scuba diver and a non-impact mountaineer and skier and practices Tai Chi.