Andrew Murtagh was educated at St Joseph's College, Beulah Hill, in London, a grammar school founded by the De La Salle Order of Christian Brothers. He went to Southampton University to read English. His desire to do a combined honours course with cricket was rejected by the university authorities, but he did it anyway. In the 1970s, he played professional cricket for Hampshire and played in the team that won the county championship in 1973 and the John Player League in 1975. In 1980 he joined Malvern College to teach English and to run the cricket, remaining in those posts for the following thirty years. He was a housemaster for eighteen of those years and, as he wryly points out, you get less for murder these days. Following the conclusion of his time as a schoolmaster, he has embarked on his third career as a writer. He met his wife, Lin, at university. They have three grown-up children and they now live in a quiet village in Worcestershire.