Andrew Purves was born in 1912 in the parish of Linton, near Kelso, Roxburghshire. His boyhood ambition was to become a shepherd like his father before him and during a long career he worked on farms in the vicinity of Kelso as well as Berwickshire and Glas Water, and over the border in Glendale and Otterburn. His career spanned a period of sweeping changes in the structure of agricultural communities and of rural life, during which the countryside of his childhood and youth has altered almost beyond recognition.