Andrew Tweeddale

My Story

I never imagined standing in a bookshop beside a tower of my own books, sharing stories with readers. For most of my life, I was a lawyer—a barrister and solicitor—working in international construction disputes. I spent over three decades in the legal world, ultimately serving as Director at Corbett & Co, and co-authoring several legal texts, including Arbitration of Commercial Disputes (OUP).

Then, in 2012, my wife was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. I was in my late forties, still imagining a future full of travel and reinvention. Her diagnosis reshaped everything. I gradually stepped away from legal practice, becoming a part-time and then a full-time carer.

For years, my days revolved around work, travel and medication schedules, medical appointments, and long, quiet stretches of time. In that quiet, Of All Faiths & None began to take shape—the first of two novels set during and after the First World War. It may seem incongruous to immerse oneself in a world of Edwardian privilege and trench warfare while dealing with the realities of progressive illness. But both, I discovered, shared the same emotional architecture: love, loss, endurance, and the redefinition of identity when the future disappears.

My characters—the Lutyens and Drewe families—grapple with grief and ideology, faith and disillusionment. Some go to war. Others stay behind. All must endure. Writing became more than an outlet; it became a way of preserving meaning. Some nights, I would write a few chapters at the kitchen table while my wife was shaking violently in front of the television or in bed. Other times, I would compose chapters in my head while sitting on a plane as I flew to the Middle East or Eastern Europe for work.

There were long silences—years when the manuscript remained untouched—when work and caring for my wife took up all my time. During those times, I read deeply: memoirs of stretcher-bearers, living in the trenches of World War 1, coping with bereavement as well as theosophical writings. There were the diaries of Edwin Lutyens and his wife, and also Castle Drogo—the last castle built in England, which became a character in the novels itself. History gave me structure when life refused to.

In 2017 I had a heart attack, as I was being stretched too much in different directions. My first reaction was to ignore it, and just carry on regardless. However, it soon became apparent to me that I couldn't continue working like I had been, and so I took the decision to retire in 2021.

Of All Faiths & None was published in September 2021 after 18 years of slow, often interrupted work. My second novel, A Remembrance of Death, came more easily, though I was more tired. After I had decided to retire as a lawyer, my wife and I sold our house and spent a year trying to find somewhere to live. I wrote the first draft of the novel living in Airbnb's. It was released on December 1, 2024, to fantastic reviews, was shortlisted for the Yeovil Literary Prize, and won the HFC Steinbeck Literary Award. 

Caregiving stripped my days bare, but it gave my writing depth. It taught me to see silence not as absence, but as presence. It gave me a second life—as an author.

And that, I think, is a form of remembrance too.