Royston Ellis is a travel writer, novelist and biographer who left school in England aged 16 determined to become a writer. He began as a poet performing his poems on stage and television to music provided by Cliff Richard’s original backing group The Drifters/Shadows, as well as by John, Paul, George and Stuart who went on to become The Beatles (using the spelling Royston suggested instead of Beetles) and Jimmy Page. His first independent travelling took him by bus and train throughout Europe where he lived in Berlin during the building of the Wall, and performed in Moscow with the famous Russian poet, Yevtushenko.

Switching to writing biographies and novels, he left England for a life of travel in 1961, living for a while on Jethou in the Channel Islands before he moved to the Canary Islands for three years and then to the Caribbean, finally settling in Sri Lanka in 1980. He wrote his first book, Mauritius, for Bradt when he set some novels there and discovered there was no up-to-date guidebook. At Hilary Bradt’s behest he wrote the iconic India By Rail (now out of print) based on three years travelling around India by train.

In 1994 and 1995 he spent several months in the Maldives researching the first edition of Bradt’s Maldives guidebook, which he completely updated in 2008. His Bradt guide Sri Lanka, drawing on his long experience of the country, has become the essential introduction to the island.

Under various pseudonyms he has written a score of historical novels set in Mauritius, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and the Maldives. He contributes features on Indian Ocean destinations to international newspapers and inflight magazines and spends his time, when not travelling, writing in his colonial cottage by the Indian Ocean in southern Sri Lanka.

Give the lowdown on Royston E.