Patrick French

Patrick French OBE (born 1966 ) is a British historian and literary scholar, who was honored for his biography of the Nobel Prize winner VS Naipaul both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Hawthornden Prize.

Life

After attending school studied English and French American Literature at the University of Edinburgh and subsequently worked as a historian and literary scholar.

In 1997 he published his book Liberty or Death: India 's Journey to Independence and Division, in which he partition of India in India and Pakistan due to the so-called Radcliffe Line in 1947 and the previous riots in Calcutta in 1946 and then significantly leaders like Muhammad Ali Jinnah represented. In 2004 he published with Younghusband. The Last Great Imperial Adventurer, a biography of the British officer and explorer Francis Younghusband, who crossed the first European to Muztagh Pass. After 2003 Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History Of A Lost Country was published, he was honored with the Order of the British Empire.

For the 2009 published biography of the Nobel Prize winner VS Naipaul, titled The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of VS Naipaul, he was honored with both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Hawthornden Prize. A Portrait: His most recent book India in 2010. Published An intimate biography of 1.2 bilion people.