Biography

Shrabani Basu is a journalist and Sunday Times best-selling author. Her books include the critically acclaimed Mystery of the Parsee Lawyer: Arthur Conan Doyle, George Edalji and the Case of the Foreigner in the English Village, For King and Another Country: Indian Soldiers on the Western Front 1914-18, Victoria & Abdul: The True Story of the Queen’s Closest Confidant (now a major motion picture,) Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan and Curry: The Story of the Nation’s Favourite Dish.

She was born in Calcutta and grew up in Dhaka, Kathmandu and Delhi. She graduated in History from St Stephen’s College, Delhi and completed her Masters from Delhi University. In 1983 she began her career as a trainee journalist in the bustling offices of The Times of India in Bombay. She moved to London in 1987. Over her long career she has done exclusive interviews with many eminent people including Benazir Bhutto, Sheikh Hasina, Salman Rushdie, Nirad C Chaudhuri and Viv Richards.

She has always combined her journalism with her love of history and all her books have evolved from her observations about the shared histories of India and Britain.

Shrabani is a frequent commentator on Indian history and Empire on British television and radio and has appeared in several documentaries on BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5.

She has been invited to speak at several literary festivals including the Cheltenham Literature Festival, Oxford Literature Festival, Henley Literature Festival, Words by the Water, Keswick, Cambridge History Festival, Jaipur Literature Festival, Indian Summer in Chicago, Seattle and Vancouver, the Lahore Literary Festival, Galle Literature Festival in Sri Lanka and the Ubud Literature Festival in Bali.


In 2010, Shrabani set up the Noor Inayat Khan Memorial Trust to ensure that Noor’s story and sacrifice were preserved for the next generation. The Memorial was unveiled in London’s Gordon Square by Princess Anne in November 2012. It was followed by the release of a Royal Mail stamp in honour of Noor in March 2014. Her work to preserve the memory of the World War II heroine has been commended in the House of Lords. In 2020 she was invited by English Heritage to unveil the Blue Plaque for Noor Inayat Khan in London.

 

Hear Shrabani Basu discuss her books at SFU, Vancouver – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bim89t4xes8