Although born in London, Twining spent most of his childhood in France after his family moved to Paris when he was four.
On his return to the United Kingdom when aged eleven, he went to Merchant Taylors' School, eventually winning a place to Christ Church, Oxford where he read French Literature and Linguistics and graduated with a First Class degree in 1995.
His first job was in the Corporate Finance Department of SBC Warburg (now known as UBS), where he worked mainly on hostile bids and defences and leveraged buyouts.
Twining wrote his first book The Double Eagle in 2003 and was signed up by agency Curtis Brown.
In each case, Twining builds a modern-day thriller involving art theft around a series of historical events and/or artifacts.