Norman, Andrew 1943-

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Norman, Andrew 1943-
(Andrew Thomas Pearce Norman)

PERSONAL:

Born May 20, 1943, in Newbury, Berkshire, England; son of Christopher Arthur (an inspector of schools) and Jean Norman; married Christina Margaret Dale (marriage ended); married Alison Rachel Dragffy, May 12, 2005; children: (first marriage) Bridget Jane, Thomas Dale. Ethnicity: "English." Education: St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, M.A., B.M., B.C.L.; also trained at Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, England, 1967-70. Religion: Church of England.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Dorset, England.

CAREER:

Physician in general practice in Poole, England, 1972-83; writer, 2001—.

WRITINGS:

HMS Hood: Pride of the Royal Navy, Stackpole Books (Mechanicsburg, PA), 2001.

ByS words Divided: Corfe Castle in the Civil War, Halsgrove (Tiverton, Devon, England), 2003.

Thomas Hardy: Behind the Inscrutable Smile, Halsgrove (Tiverton, Devon, England), 2003.

T.E. Lawrence: Unravelling the Enigma, Halsgrove (Tiverton, Devon, England), 2003.

Sir Francis Drake: Behind the Pirate's Mask, Halsgrove (Tiverton, Devon, England), 2004.

Dunshay: Reflections on a Dorset Manor House, Halsgrove (Tiverton, Devon, England), 2004.

Robert Mugabe and the Betrayal of Zimbabwe, McFarland (Jefferson, NC), 2004.

Enid Blyton and Her Enchantment with Dorset, Halsgrove (Tiverton, Devon, England), 2005.

Thomas Hardy: Christmas Carollings, Halsgrove (Tiverton, Devon, England), 2005.

Adolf Hitler: The Final Analysis, Spellmount (Staplehurst, Kent, England), 2005.

Agatha Christie: The Finished Portrait, Tempus Publishing (Stroud, Gloucestershire, England), 2006.

Tynahem: Portrait of the Lost Village, Halsgrove (Tiverton, Devon, England), 2007.

Arthur Conan Coyle: Beyond Sherlock Holmes, NPI Media Group (Stroud, Gloucestershire, England), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Andrew Norman told CA: "My ancestors are from Dorset, where I have lived for most of my adult life; so it is only natural that I should choose to write about that county's most famous literary son, Thomas Hardy. Also on a Dorset theme, I describe the heroic defense of Corfe Castle by Lady Mary Bankes in the English Civil War; the village of Tyneham, which remained untouched until requisitioned by the army in 1943 for the training of British and United Kingdom forces prior to the Normandy invasion; and Dunsay Manor, where sculptor Mary Spencer Watson lived until her death in 2006. My biography of T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia), who also lived in Dorset, attempts to answer the questions: why did he change from an extrovert into an introvert, and why are flowers placed in decreasing numbers on his grave each year? Enid Blyton took her holidays in Dorset, where she gained inspiration for her 'Famous Five' series of books, and in my biography of her I have retraced her steps and attempted to link each story with a specific location.

"My biography of Sir Francis Drake is an attempt to discover the man behind the pirate's mask. My biography of Robert Mugabe arose from the fact that I went to school in Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia). HMS Hood: Pride of the Royal Navy sheds new light on why the ship sank, previous explanations being, in my view, inadequate. Having previously been a practicing doctor, trained to have an inquiring mind, the personality of Adolf Hitler has always been a source of fascination to me, and in my biography of the führer, I have linked his behavior to a generic abnormality which explains, for the first time, some the bizarre and catastrophic decisions that he made during World War II. Agatha Christie: The Finished Portrait investigates the significance of the appalling nightmares which the great detective writer suffered as a child, and her mysterious disappearance for ten days in December, 1926.

"[My latest book is] a biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a doctor who became a detective writer, in which I turn the tables on Doyle and investigate the author himself, with some surprising results!"