Ray Howgego
(Raymond John Howgego BSc FRGS, born London, 1946) is an independent traveller and writer
who, over the past twenty years, has visited many remote parts of the world, following in
the explorers' footsteps and seeking out local sources of information. He has travelled in
nearly every country between the UK and China, and in the Middle East, the Central Asian
republics, Australia, New Zealand, Egypt, East and West Africa, South America (from
Amazonia to Cape Horn), Iceland and various oceanic islands. He is author of the Encyclopedia
of Exploration (Hordern House, Sydney, 2003-2013), now a standard reference
source in libraries and collections throughout the world. The five volumes, which together
include over 5157 articles in 4232 pages (some 4.2 million words), have been cited as
comprising the longest regularly published book in the English language to have been
written by a single author unaided. The recently completed a fifth volume, dealing
specifically with apocryphal, invented, imaginary and plagiarized narratives of travel,
was published by Hordern House in 2013. All volumes are still available, and are most
inexpensively obtained direct from the publisher. For further details see www.explorersencyclopedia.com
Ray's The Book of Exploration, a more
modestly priced, lavishly illustrated popular history of exploration, was published
simultaneously in August 2009 by Weidenfeld & Nicholson (Orion Books) in the UK and
Bloomsbury (Walker Publishing) in the USA, and is available from online booksellers and
local bookstores throughout the world. A German translation was issued by Primus Verlag in
September 2010. In addition, Ray has written the only book-length biography of the
prolific lady traveller Gertrude Benham. Titled A very quiet and harmless traveller:
Gertrude Emily Benham 1867-1938, it was published by the Plymouth Museum in July 2009
and is available from the museum's bookshop.
Ray was Consultant Editor for the Illustrated Atlas of Exploration, published by
Weldon Owen in 2011 and syndicated elsewhere. He has also contributed a number of articles
on 'missing explorers' to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; he writes
book reviews for the International Journal of Maritime History; and he has been a
consultant to the National Geographic magazine, and to several TV documentaries,
including the VPRO film series O'Hanlon's Heroes (2012) and the series Raiders
of the Lost Past screened by the Yesterday channel (UK) in 2013.
Ray is fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, an honorary member of the Travellers Club, a member of the Society for the History of Discoveries, and an officer of the Hakluyt Society. He writes and maintains the Hakluyt Society's website and edits the the online Journal of the Hakluyt Society. He has worked as series editor for the society's publication of The Journal of William Broughton in the North Pacific, and in 2010 he delivered the Hakluyt Society Annual Lecture at the RGS on the subject of imaginary voyages, printed copies of which are available from the Society.
Ray Howgego was born in East Ham, London, and raised in East Ham and Wanstead, Essex. He was educated at East Ham Grammar School for Boys and at Nottingham University, where he took an honours degree in physics (1968) and qualified as a teacher (1969). In his youth he travelled widely in Europe on both sides of the Iron Curtain, later extending his travels to more remote parts of the earth. He taught for many years at Caterham School, Surrey, and served for twelve years as a captain in the Territorial Army (Queens Regiment), specialising in navigation, radio communication and personal survival. He retired from teaching in 1997 to pursue a full-time career as a traveller and writer. He has two children and one grandchild and currently lives with his wife Pat in Harestone Valley, Caterham, Surrey. His numerous hobbies include collecting recordings of British classical music, amateur radio (as G4DTC), gardening, and the renovation of antique electronic equipment. Email address: ray@howgego.co.uk
Occasional articles on selected explorers:
John Hanning Speke & James Augustus Grant
Frederick Albert Mitchell-Hedges. A definitive biography