Born in Leicester, England, Peter Goodwin was apprenticed as a lad of 14 to 'Boots the Chemist's' bindery in Nottingham where he learned his trade over seven years as an articled apprentice. He repaired books for the famous Boots Library as well as making all the stationery and diaries for the company.

Peter Goodwin’s bookbinding career began on 28 August 1944 when he began his 7 year apprenticeship with Boots the Chemist in Nottingham, England. The first 6 weeks were spent in the sewing room sawing in the kerfs for the sewing ladies. Boots employed 100 people in the bookbinding department. One of the many skills he learned was repairing the books that circulated in the ‘Boots Booklovers Library’, around 15,000 per week were repaired.

He also made prescription books for the dispensary-these were springback ledgers bound in full rough calf and were done in batches of 300. Boots also made 5,000 leather yapp edged diaries per year and 300,000 home diaries at the same time. Peter also learned to use paper ruling machines and had to attend night school from 6.30pm to 9.30pm on Tuesday and Thursday nights and Saturday mornings from 9 until noon. He left Boots in 1966 and worked for the prison service until being employed by Whitcomb and Tombs to train the bookbinding apprentices in New Zealand in 1973;

Peter Goodwin with the Fourth Folio of Shakespeare where he was bindery manager at Auckland City Libraries