From Stage to Page
Andrew Mackintosh has for many years been a familiar face on both television and stage. With his humorous epistolary novel, ‘Letter from Helvetica’ he made the leap over into the world of the written word. Also released as a dramatized podcast, ‘Letter from Helvetica’, with its contrasting villages of Helvetica and Burbango situated at opposite ends of the earth, found a worldwide audience.
Andrew was born in America but grew up in Scotland where the historical romance he is currently working on is set. He has lived in England since 1978 but loves to return to Scotland whenever he can.
What Readers Are Saying
Mackintosh’s writing is dense, nicely observed and peopled with a diverse collection of characters. It’s impossible not to get drawn in.
Absolutely brilliant!! Laughed from start to finish!! One of the funniest and most brilliantly written stories I’ve had the pleasure of reading!
The characters work well together. I like them best when they are being utterly outrageous. It was a treat to sit down with a steaming cuppa, relax and be taken into another world. More please.
Latest Insights and Goings On
From Scotland
I’m not entirely sure why I think of Scotland as home. I wasn’t born there – I was born in the newly designated shithole of a country known as America. Of my sixty-five years, I have lived roughly forty-four of them in England. But that’s where my roots seem to have dug themselves most deeply into the soil.
To Scotland
To Scotland Going to need to wrap up warm Sunday. A trip to the health club for a swim and a sauna, then back home for lunch. Sitting at the dining table, chomping on a slice of Ole and Steen chia rye bread with some brie elegantly balanced atop...
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Why Does Sir Keir Starmer Sound So Boring?
I’ve never been one to share much via social media. I am sufficiently presumptuous to assume that people will want to read the long-form nonsense I disgorge from time to time, but I’ve never felt the need to share the minutiae of my quotidian existence.
A Farewell to Two Theatrical Greats
Last week, we said goodbye to one of the towering figures of British Theatre, Dame Joan Plowright, who has died at the age of 95, and to the wonderful Charles Kay who has left us at the equally grand old age of 94.
A Writer’s Humdrum Conundrum
As a writer, I have little time for writing. I’m being literal here, you understand. I don’t mean I have little tolerance for it, I mean that each day affords miserably meagre pickings when it comes to carving out time to write.
Crossing the Event Horizon
Substack has been poking me in the brain for months. Like a bored little brother repeatedly prodding your arm as you sit in the back seat of your parents’ Ford Escort on a rainy day in Stoke on Trent.
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Letter from Helvetica
By way of explanation...
Letter from Helvetica is a humorous ‘epistolary’ novel that takes the form of emails exchanged between Abigail Wesley, a talented young botanist from Surrey, and her Uncle John, an acerbic retired Lieutenant Colonel who lives in the not quite real village of Helvetica in Cornwall.
It was released as a dramatized podcast in 2023. However, the complete series was never released, the decision having been taken that the format wasn’t quite right. It will be released as an audio book instead during 2026.
Click below if you would like to learn more or if you would like to listen to the existing episodes.
