ANDREW NORMAN was born in Newbury, Berkshire, UK in 1943. Having been educated at Thornhill High School, Gwelo, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and St Edmund Hall, Oxford, he qualified in medicine at the Radcliffe Infirmary. He married in 1967 and has two children. From 1972-83 Andrew worked as a general practitioner in Poole, Dorset, before a spinal injury cut short his medical career. He is now an established writer whose published works include biographies of Thomas Hardy, Agatha Christie, Winston Churchill, Enid Blyton, Beatrix Potter, T. E. Lawrence, Adolf Hitler, and Robert Mugabe. Andrew remarried in 2005.

Andrew's interest in Thomas Hardy arose from the fact that his paternal forebears came from the parish of Fordington (Dorchester), which is adjacent to Hardy's own parish of Stinsford. In fact, his ancestor John Norman's three sons were baptized by the Reverend Henry Moule, whose own son Horatio (known as 'Horace') became arguably Thomas Hardy's greatest friend.