Andy Stuart

​                                            I was born in Malaysia in 1960 to Roderick Stuart and Lucy                                                    Walton, Arthur’s eldest daughter. We came back to Britain a                                                    year later.

 

                                           My dad was a regular soldier, volunteering as a young man in                                               1957. As he lived in Ripon, North Yorkshire he joined the Royal                                             Engineers, with whom he saw service with the Gurkha                                                             Engineers in Malaysia and learnt Gurkhali. He transferred to                                                 the Royal Corps of Transport in the 1960’s, so as a family,                                                         with my two sisters, we moved between the UK and Germany                                               several times.

 

Between moves we stayed with my grandparents, Arthur and Clare O’Connor from Ballinasloe, Ireland. They’d married in 1932 and lived near Aldershot.

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My secondary education was stabilised at Crown Woods Comprehensive School in Eltham, South East London. Close to Woolwich, so I naturally became a Gunner in the Royal Artillery for a short army Commission prior to University. I'm sure Arthur would've been proud.

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Three years later, after studying Economics at Warwick, and getting an army sponsorship, I rejoined the army. A seven months Officer Training Course at Sandhurst took me to Germany, Canada, Northern Ireland and Thirsk in North Yorkshire with 27 Field Regiment, Royal Artillery.

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In 1986 I started working in the City: securities markets and banking, most of which with Robert Fleming, a British Investment Bank. I travelled regularly to Hong Kong, Tokyo and New York. I left finance in 2008 to co-found a technology development business.

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I started writing as a ‘lockdown’ project that spiralled when I sat down to capture the stories Arthur Walton told. Books weren’t originally planned, but his inspiration created  plenty of new stories too.

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Having contracted the writing 'virus', I'm now working on another novel about fraud and scams in the financial sector, set in the 1920’s.

Andy Stuart

August 2024