Gillian Wright
Gillian Wright was born in the UK in 1957. After studying at the School of Oriental and African Studies of London University, she received a first class degree in South Asian Studies.Gillian Wright visited India for the first time in 1977 and has since spent more than twenty years in this country, working for radio and television and especially for the BBC World Service in London. She has worked as a researcher on several programs, including Faces of India, a series celebrating fifty years of Indian independence, and a documentary on the railway line from Karachi to the Khyber, Great Railway Journeys of the World. Her recent radio productions include Hour, a documentary on the Mahakumbh Mela of 2001, and a documentary on the Grand Trunk Road from Kolkata to Delhi.
Gillian Wright has written a number of books on Indian wildlife, history and politics, including Birds of India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka (1993), The Odyssey Illustrated Guide to Sri Lanka (1993) and Sri Lanka: Our World in Color (1998). To collect the necessary material for An Introduction to the Hill Stations of India (1991), the very first guide to the hill stations, she traveled the mountain ranges of the subcontinent. She co-authored India in Slow Motion (2002) with Mark Tully and has collaborated with him on a number of books, among them Mrs. Gandhi’s Last Battle (1985), No Full Stops in India (1991) and Heart of India (1996).
Formerly a columnist with the Kolkata Telegraph and The Tribune, she regularly writes reviews for India Today and contributes to Outlook, The Hindu, The Telegraph and Book Review.
Gillian Wright speaks Hindi and Urdu. She has translated numerous Urdu books and several modern classic Hindi novels into English. Gillian Wright lives in New Delhi.
