Peter Mayne (1908–1979) was an English
travel writer who wrote about his experiences in
North Africa, the
Indian subcontinent and
Greece. His father, C. Mayne, was Principal of
Rajkumar College in
Rajkot
Rajkot () is the fourth-largest city in the Indian state of Gujarat after Ahmedabad, Vadodara, and Surat, and is in the centre of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat. Rajkot is the 35th-largest metropolitan area in India, with a population of ...
, India from 1903 to 1923, and later became guardian of the young
Maharajah of
Jaipur. After attending school in England, Mayne returned to India. Following
Partition
Partition may refer to:
Computing Hardware
* Disk partitioning, the division of a hard disk drive
* Memory partition, a subdivision of a computer's memory, usually for use by a single job
Software
* Partition (database), the division of a ...
, he served as deputy secretary to
Pakistan's Ministry of Refugees and Rehabilitation. In 1949, he moved to
Morocco; four years later, his first and probably best-known book, an account of his residence in the city's Medina, was published as ''The Alleys of Marrakesh'' in England and the United States. Since the 1982
Eland
Eland may refer to:
Animals
*''Taurotragus'', a genus of antelope
** Common eland of East and Southern Africa
** Giant eland of Central and Western Africa
Places
* Eland, Wisconsin, United States
* An old spelling of Elland, West Yorkshire
* Ela ...
edition, new editions of the book have appeared under the alternative title ''A Year in Marrakesh''.
In ''The Narrow Smile: A Journey Back to the North-West Frontier'' Mayne's subject was a journey through the Paktun tribal lands lying between
Afghanistan and
Pakistan; the book is currently available for free download in different formats from
the Internet Archive. ''The Saints of Sind'', about the "pirs" or saints and dervishes of Pakistan's
Sind region was followed two years later, after Mayne moved to Greece, by ''The Private Sea'', a seemingly rambling but enchanting book about a visit of a few weeks to the island of
Poros.
This spate of creativity (four books in six years) was followed by a long period of silence, broken only by the publication in 1975 of ''Friends in High Places : a Season in the Himalayas'';
[ Bodley Head, London 1975] the "friends" in question were Jagut and Mussoorie, sons of the exiled Rana Maharajah Marshal of Nepal, and Mayne's account of his visit to the two very different men, one living on an estate by the River Jumna in India and one in Kathmandu, is interspersed with his research into the
Kot Massacre of 1846 which changed the course of Himalayan history. Peter Mayne died four years after the publication of ''Friends in High Places''.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mayne, Peter
English travel writers
1979 deaths
1908 births
English male non-fiction writers
20th-century English male writers