About
Dr Patrick French is returning to CRASSH in Easter Term 2018. He was previously a CRASSH Visiting Fellow in Easter Terms 2016 and 2017. In 2016 he was appointed as the inaugural Dean of the new School of Arts and Sciences at Ahmedabad University in India. He is also Professor for the Public Understanding of the Humanities, advocating their importance in a complete education. During the Easter term, he is Derek Brewer Visiting Fellow at Emmanuel College.
Patrick has a PhD in South Asian Studies and an MA in English Literature, both from Edinburgh University. His current research interests include identity politics and the use of the past, theories of biography and the later world history of the British empire. While at CRASSH, he will be engaged in primary research for the authorised biography of the Nobel laureate Doris Lessing.
Patrick’s books include India: A Portrait 2011, London: Allen Lane; New York: Knopf; New Delhi: Penguin; Lisbon: Temas e Debates (Portuguese); Amsterdam: Atlas (Dutch); Delhi: Penguin (Hindi); Barcelona: Duomo (Spanish); The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul 2008, London: Picador; New York: Knopf; Barcelona: Duomo (Spanish); Beijing: CITIC (Chinese); Antwerp: Atlas (Dutch); Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History of a Lost Land 2003, London: Harper Collins; New York: Knopf; Moscow: ACT (Russian): Paris: Albin Michel (French); Prague: BB Art (Czech); New Delhi: Penguin (Hindi); Prague: Ushuaia (Polish); Liberty or Death: India’s Journey to Independence and Division 1997, London: Harper Collins; New Delhi: Harper Collins; New Delhi: Penguin (Hindi); Amsterdam: Atlas (Dutch); Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer 1994, London: Harper Collins; Milano: Sperling & Kupfer (Italian); Malaysia: Marco Polo (Chinese). He is a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Hawthornden Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, the Royal Society of Literature WH Heinemann Prize and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, and was a finalist for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the History Today Book of the Year award and the Samuel Johnson Prize.
