Lucy Caldwell, a Northern Irish playwright and novelist, is married to Tom Routh. They live in Whitechapel, East London, with their two children, William and Orla Rose.
She has won the 2021 BBC National Short Story Award and the 2023 Walter Scott Prize.
Lucy, the daughter of Peter and Maureen, was born in Belfast in 1981. She has emerged as one of Northern Ireland’s most celebrated contemporary writers.
She initially viewed her hometown as “boring, introverted.” Yet, she later embraced her roots, declaring her love for Belfast and pride in her origins.
Caldwell first gained recognition as a playwright. Her debut short play, The River, won the PMA Most Promising Playwright Award.
Caldwell’s first full-length play, Leaves, earned critical acclaim, winning the George Devine Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and the BBC Stewart Parker Award.
Her talent extends to radio drama, Girl from Mars, which won both the Irish Playwrights’ and Screenwriters’ Guild Award and the BBC’s Richard Imison Award for best script.
Her debut novel, Where They Were Missed, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, while her second novel, The Meeting Point, explored themes of faith and displacement.
In 2021, Caldwell won the BBC National Short Story Award for “All the People Were Mean and Bad.” Her 2022 novel, These Days, earned the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2023.
Lucy Caldwell’s Husband, Tom Routh, Is An Architect
Lucy Caldwell, the acclaimed Belfast-born writer, has frequently spoken about the profound influences in her life, including her upbringing, literary career, and family.
Among the most significant figures in her personal and creative world is her husband, Tom Routh, an award-winning architect who has shaped not only the spaces around them but also Caldwell’s perspective on art, design, and life.
Tom Routh is a partner at Gatti Routh Rhodes Architects, a London-based firm known for its innovative and thoughtful designs. In 2019, Routh was named Young Architect of the Year, a prestigious accolade that highlighted his rising influence in the field.
That same week, Lucy was in Belfast as the Seamus Heaney Fellow, launching her anthology Being Various, a moment that encapsulated the couple’s parallel successes in their respective creative fields.
Routh’s work has undoubtedly left its mark on Caldwell’s life. She has admitted that before meeting him, she had little appreciation for the beauty of concrete, a material often celebrated in modernist architecture.
Given that her father, Peter Caldwell, was also an architect, the connection between literature and design seems to run deep in her personal history.
The couple lives in Whitechapel, East London, with their two children, William and Orla Rose. Parenthood, as Caldwell has described, turned her life “upside-down and inside-out, but in the best ways possible.”
The balance between creative careers and family life is one that both Caldwell and Routh navigate with evident dedication.
Routh’s architectural vision likely extends into their home, blending functionality with aesthetic sensibility, a theme that resonates in Caldwell’s writing.
While Lucy Caldwell’s literary voice is distinctly her own, the influence of her husband’s profession is evident in her heightened awareness of space, structure, and the stories embedded within buildings.
