John Keay

John Keay was born on 18 September 1941 in Barnstaple, Devon, England, to parents of Scottish origin. His father Stanley Walter Keay (1902–72) was a master mariner and his mother Florence Jessie née Keeping (1905–92) was a housewife. He studied at Ampleforth College in Yorkshire before going on to read Modern History at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he earned high honours. Among his teachers at Oxford were the historian A. J. P. Taylor and the future playwright Alan Bennett. In 1965 he visited India for the first time. He went to Kashmir for a fortnight's trout-fishing and liked it so much that he returned the following year, this time for six months.

It was during his second stay in Kashmir that Keay decided upon writing as a career. From India, he sent unsolicited articles to many British magazines and newspapers and eventually joined the staff of The Economist (1965–71) and returned to India often as its political correspondent. He also started contributing stories to BBC Radio.

In 1971 he gave up his correspondent's job to write his first book, Into India, which was published in 1973. Keay followed it with two volumes about the European exploration of the Western Himalayas in the 19th century: When Men and Mountains Meet (1977) and The Gilgit Game (1979). These two books were later combined into a single-volume paperback by John Murray. Alexander Gardner (1785–1877), the American adventurer and mercenary employed by the Sikh Empire, who is featured in Keay's 1977 and 1979 books, is the sole focus of his book, The Tartan Turban: In Search of Alexander Gardner, released in 2017.

In the 1980s he worked for

Awards and recognition

John Keay's major books have all received strong positive reviews in leading publications in the UK, US, Asia and elsewhere. The professional recognition he has received has included the following:^[7]

• Fellow (
  FRGS), Royal Geographical Society
  , UK.
• Sir Percy Sykes Memorial Medal of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, UK (2009).
• Honorary Doctorate from the University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland (2019).
• Fellow, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (2013–14).
• Fellow, University of Dundee, Scotland (2010–12).

Family

His late first wife Julia Keay, née Atkins (1946–2011), was also a successful writer and historian. She was the daughter of the politician

Bibliography

• Into India (
  ISBN 0-7195-2918-2
• When Men and Mountains Meet: The Explorers of the Western Himalayas, 1820–75 (John Murray 1977),
  ISBN 0-7195-3334-1
• The
  ISBN 0-7195-3569-7
• India Discovered: The Achievement of the
  ISBN 0-7112-0047-5
• Eccentric Travellers (John Murray 1982),
  ISBN 0-7195-3868-8
• Highland Drove (John Murray 1984),
  ISBN 0-7195-4105-0
• Explorers Extraordinary (John Murray 1985),
  ISBN 0-7195-4249-9
• The
  ISBN 0-600-56819-9
  (ed.)
• The Honourable Company: A History of the
  ISBN 0-00-217515-0
• The Robinson Book of Exploration (Robinson 1993),
  ISBN 1-85487-240-0
  (ed.)
• ISBN 0-00-255082-2
  (ed. with Julia Keay)
• Indonesia: From
  ISBN 1-85283-545-1
• Last Post: The End of Empire in the Far East (John Murray 1997),
  ISBN 0-7195-5346-6
• India: A History. New York City:
  ISBN 0-8021-3797-0
  .
• The Great Arc: The Dramatic Tale of How India Was Mapped and
  ISBN 0-00-257062-9
• Sowing the Wind: The Seeds of Conflict in the Middle East (John Murray 2003),
  ISBN 0-7195-5583-3
• The
  ISBN 0-7195-6198-1
• Mad About the Mekong: Exploration and Empire in South East Asia (HarperCollins 2005),
  ISBN 0-00-711113-4
• China: A History (HarperCollins 2008),
  ISBN 978-0-00-722177-6
• ISBN 978-1-4050-4924-5
• The Tartan Turban: In Search of Alexander Gardner, (Kashi House 2017)
  ISBN 978-1911271000
• Himālaya: Exploring the Roof of the World, (Bloomsbury Publishing 2022) ISBN 9781408891155