Roy Moxham, who traded tea plantation life for writing and whose Great Hedge of India reached readers in several languages, has died aged 86.
Roy Moxham, a former tea plantation supervisor who reinvented himself as an author, has died at 86. In later life he wrote about tea and about India, a country he returned to many times on long, immersive trips.
His biggest hit was The Great Hedge of India, published in 2001. It found readers well beyond the English-speaking world, appearing in several Indian languages as well as English.
The book's subject is one of the strangest barriers in colonial history. The hedge was a wall of thorny shrubs about four metres high and 2.5 metres wide, stretching some 2,500 miles across British India. It served as a customs line, patrolled by 12,000 men on behalf of the East India Company.
Moxham's path from plantation work to published author was an unlikely one. His books turned a hands-on knowledge of tea and a long attachment to India into stories that readers on both sides of that history could pick up and enjoy.
