Robert Byron

Robert Byron
Born	26 February 1905 Wembley, Middlesex
Died	24 February 1941 (aged 35) off Cape Wrath, Scotland
Occupation	Author, historian, art critic
Nationality	British
Period	1928–37
Genre	History, travel, non-fiction,
Subject	India, Middle East, Tibet, Persia, Afghanistan

Robert Byron (26 February 1905 – 24 February 1941) was a British travel writer, best known for his travelogue The Road to Oxiana. He was also a noted writer, art critic and historian.

Byron was born in 1905, and educated at Eton and Merton College, Oxford, from which he was expelled for his hedonistic and rebellious manner. He was best known at Oxford for his impersonation of Queen Victoria. He died in 1941, during the Second World War, when the ship on which he was travelling was torpedoed by a U-Boat off Cape Wrath, Scotland, en route to Egypt.

Byron travelled to widely different places; Mount Athos, India, the Soviet Union, and Tibet. However it was in Persia and Afghanistan that he found the subject round which he forged his style of modern travel writing, when he later came to write up his account of The Road to Oxiana in Peking, his temporary home.

In his day, Byron's travel books were outsold by those of writers Peter Fleming and Evelyn Waugh.

An appreciation of architecture is a strong element in Byron's writings. He was a forceful advocate for the preservation of historic buildings and a founder member of the Georgian Group. A philhellene, he also pioneered, in the English speaking world, a renewal of interest Byzantine History. Byron has been described as 'one of the first and most brilliant of twentieth century philhellenes'.

...
Wikipedia