Randal Keynes

Randal Keynes

Randal Keynes in 2009
Born Randal Hume Keynes
29 July 1948
Cambridge, England, U.K.[1]

Randal Hume Keynes, OBE, FLS (/ˈkeɪnz/ KAYNZ; born 29 July 1948)[2] is a British conservationist, author and great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin. He is the author of the intimate exploration of his famous ancestry, Annie's Box, subtitled Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution (2001), a book about the relationship between Darwin and his daughter Annie, whose early death deeply affected him.[3] The 2009 film Creation is based on this book.

He has taken a leading role in the campaign to have Down House, Darwin's former home, designated a World Heritage Site.[4]

Life and career

Keynes was born in Cambrdige. He is the son of the Hon. Anne Pinsent (née Adrian) and physiologist Richard Keynes.[2] He is the great-nephew of the economist John Maynard Keynes and the brother of the Cambridge Professors Simon Keynes (Historian), and Roger Keynes (Medical Scientist) whose daughter – Keynes’s niece – is the Catholic writer and apologist Laura Keynes.[5] He is the grandson of the surgeon Geoffrey Keynes, Nobel Prize-winning physiologist Edgar Douglas Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian, and Hester Adrian, Baroness Adrian.

Keynes’s son, Skandar (born 1991), is an actor best known for his role as Edmund Pevensie in the Narnia films. He also has a daughter, Soumaya Keynes (born 1989), who has appeared in various productions for BBC Radio 4.

Keynes was educated at Marlborough College and New College Oxford. He is a distinguished supporter of the British Humanist Association.[6]

He campaigned successfully against the redevelopment of Kings Cross Station and for the preservation of the Caledonian Road neighbourhood in central London. He recalls one of the turning points as his persuasion of two members of the House of Lords to ask the government to guarantee the funding of the project; when the ministers declined to, the bill fell.[7]

He was the author of two Oxford Dictionary of National Biography articles on Anne Darwin and William Erasmus Darwin[8] in 2005.

Ancestry

See also

References

  1. ↑ https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QVQT-PVJT
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 thePeerage.com - Person Page 11859
  3. ↑ Turney, Jon (2002-06-08). "Darwin's lost daughter". The Guardian. Retrieved 2008-02-18.
  4. ↑ Boxer, Sarah (2005-11-18). "An Image of Darwin, Carrying on His Work". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-02-18.
  5. ↑ West, Ed (13 June 2013). "Descendant of Charles Darwin becomes a Catholic apologist". The Catholic Herald. Retrieved 10 February 2015.
  6. ↑ "Distinguished Supporters". British Humanist Association. Retrieved 2012-04-26.
  7. ↑ The Secret History of Our Streets, a 2012 BBC and Open University co-production, both a series of six hour-long television programmes (in which he is interviewed in episode 2, "Caledonian Road") and also a book.
  8. ↑ Keynes, Randal (2004). "Darwin, William Erasmus (1839–1914)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/94741.

External links