Aquila chrysaetos is the Latin-Greek name for the golden eagle, which opens the first ‘Percy Stewart’ novel, Tunesmith, tinsmith.

The plan to spend a lifetime writing, illustrating and composing has had to simmer on the back-burner ever since he went to live in the Pyrenees, in 1976. 

'There at about eleven hundred metres, I first met a wild golden eagle, which stared fearlessly into my eyes.  Both of us were cloaked by a clinging April mist descending over a steep slope. For human feet the mountain turf was made unscaleable by a skin of wet snow, but the eagle slipped back into the cloud without a wing- beat.'

Four years and many formative experiences later, he returned to December-bound England, from an earthquake-relief mission in southern Italy. 

'It took only a few jealous, vindictive words to put me off the natural, instinctive trail which leads memory and imagination across a virgin page.

'Since that day a succession of tangled pathways has had to be followed.  For nearly five decades the old nickname, ‘Percy’, seemed long-forgotten.'

For anyone who survives them, thorny paths may eventually prove to be fruitful, in unexpected ways.

'Tunesmith, tinsmith sprang to life unexpectedly after we had all been released from the Covid prison.  Writing it was sheer joy, and that positive energy comes through on every page.

'Pilgrim was a natural sequel, because Jacques is clearly on a quest.  I love the  play of darkness and light in this novel, the heart-wrenching tragedy and the unexpected joy.

'Hetty is a purely fictional character, but clearly there are real people and real experiences in her beautiful, tragic soul.

'One young woman made a lasting impression, with her politeness and thoughtful attitude towards a stranger on a bicycle.  It was surprisingly easy to create a warm, kind character sparked off by a couple of brief conversations with someone I shall probably never meet again. I remembered a few old friends, visualising them in their twenties, and soon the skeleton of Hetty's character grew flesh.'

'Most of Hetty's exceptional talent as a wildlife artist is closely based on a male friend who really was that skilled in his teens.  As a young zoologist, he had already illustrated a botanical book, written by his father.  Both of them were world-authorities in their fields.

'I only recently realised that a female friend from around the same period is also there in Hetty.  She was an architect and did the most wonderful watercolours of historic buildings. Aspects of friends and relatives can surface from memories which are so distant that I might only discover an identity months, or years, later.

'Maggie Stiggle came to me from nowhere as a lovely warm, playful name, the perfect foil for Jacques' dreamy romanticism and Hetty's scientific self-restraint.

'One day I met someone of around my own age on Chain Bridge, near Berwick.  She had just been picking apples.  Her approach was refreshingly direct and her voice speaks to me every time Maggie makes an appearance on the page.'

'Soon I realised that a good friend from many years ago was also there in my head every time I was writing Maggie.  So I was able to fictionalise some astonishing truths about a friend who was incredibly courageous, walking alone across Botswana and going on expeditions in the Arctic.

'An unexpected joy came this year in the form of two courageous young women whom I met weeks apart in the Pyrenees. They were both walking hundreds of miles completely alone, sometimes several days at a time with no direct human contact. One had walked from the south of Spain and was continuing to Italy; the other was walking from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. They will now appear fictionalised in book three.'

Eagles, ospreys and vultures play important rôles in the Tunesmith stories.  In some places, song-thrushes and blackbirds provide a sound-track.

'Now I am well into writing Feeding the vultures, whose research has been a life-changing experience!

'Birds have been major influences in my own thinking, seeing how they have evolved and how they adapt to changes. They are also such great communicators, some of them with only a few 'words', others with many.  Unlike us, they don't waste words, or energy.'

A wealth of naturalistic detail brings places to life in all three books.  It also sheds light on behaviour which we might claim to be uniquely human.

'In Navarre a few weeks ago I listened to a nightingale singing the whole night.  After a two-hour break for breakfast, he started to rehearse new phrases which he used to perfection in the following night's performance!

'His method was every bit as productive, structured and experimental as that of any good professional composer.'

'The golden eagle is, to me, the ultimate symbol of freedom to ride the winds of life.  This is what writers need to do, rather than slavishly following trends in a race to get social-media hits.

'In the most subtle and insidious ways, psychological research is being used to direct our thoughts and feelings, squashing us into plastic moulds like so much play-dough.

'Our overpopulated, over-industrialised, over-commercialised society is undermining our simple freedom to be human, to give kindness and friendship.

'A golden eagle, like many other top predators, is a tense, observant, intelligent animal.  As a chick in the nest it is extremely vulnerable, but as an adult it has the courage, the speed and the skill to bring down a wolf.

'In April this year it was wonderful to learn that a pair of golden eagles still lives on the mountain where I first saw one forty-eight years ago.'

'Returning to live for three months in the Pyrenees strengthened my convictions that the independence of a golden eagle, and of these Tunesmith books, is something to treasure, something worth fighting for!

'Doing all of the work, including page-setting and design, is time-consuming and demands everything I have learned over the last few decades.  I chose to put all of my energy and commitment into this, to ensure that the first two books were as good as I could possibly make them with the means available at the time.'

For book three there have been many collaborators.

'A wonderful wildlife photographer will provide the cover and their might be some line-drawings with the text.  Friends old and new gladly told me their stories.  In the Pyrenees I feel completely at home, so people open up their hearts and tell me all kinds of interesting things.

'On a main road outside a village I caught up with a man who was walking in the same direction.  I said hello and he talked for half an hour, standing in the road, telling me about bears, the forest and motorbikes.  He was obviously not in the best of health, but he didn't say a word about any of his ailments.  He was going to check his wood-stack, stored by the road through the winter.  He had felled and logged all the trees single-handed, in his seventies.  I can only guess that he likes a glass of wine.'

The Tunesmith Trilogy is being sold through independent bookshops in Berwick-upon-Tweed.

'By dealing only with local shops where I can call in to say hello, the job of selling the books becomes a simple pleasure, too.  I have no interest in high-pressure marketing, because these books are all about real friendship, real life, healthy, natural human contact.  

'That is what we need now and it was a sheer delight to spend a recent evening listening to the very independent opinions of two young men who clearly realise that places such as our local pubs are where real life happens!  Perhaps after three decades of marketing ourselves in every available 'virtual' medium, the pendulum will swing back towards living real lives.

'If I walk into one of our second-hand bookshops, a huge world is waiting there on the shelves.  I don't need to do an internet search which forces the murky waters of a certain South American river down my throat at the top of every page...I simply look at the books and find what interests me.  The smile from the shopkeeper comes completely free of charge.

'It is a heart-warming thought that if my ghost floats through one of these shops in twenty or thirty years' time, the Tunesmith books might well be there on the shelves for future generations to enjoy.  That is precisely why I am writing them.'

Tunesmith, tinsmith grew wings following a brief conversation in a local pub, and now all three books have a life of their own.

'Initially I was a little unsure of the hidden nature of the narrator, Jacques, but the kind and thoughtful words of someone I only met for a few minutes immediately defined his character.

'That evening Jacques became as real to me as if he were my own flesh and blood, the young man I might have been in another life.' 

'Writing Jacques' thoughts, experiences and feelings feels like slipping effortlessly into rôle as soon as I step onto the writer's stage...that wonderful world, a blank page.

'Calling in for a pint after an evening cycle-ride seems like a good plan for a healthy life.  It helps me to write and when the books are finished, they build bridges, making new friends wherever I travel.  Some of these friends find themselves transported to the pages of a brand new book.'

P.S., Berwickshire, July 2024

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