John Thomas Baines

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, seeking out local sources of information, and adding to a vast collection of travel literature. He has travelled in nearly every country between the UK and China, and in the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand, Egypt, East and West Africa, South America (from Amazonia to Cape Horn), and various oceanic islands. He is author of the Encyclopedia of Exploration (Hordern House, Sydney, 2003-2008), now a standard reference source in libraries and collections throughout the world. The four volumes, which together include over 4500 articles in approximately 3660 pages (some 3.8 million words), have been cited as comprising the longest book in the English language (non-fiction) to have been written by a single author unaided. Ray has recently completed a fifth volume (c. 540,000 words) dealing specifically with apocryphal, invented, imaginary and plagiarized narratives of travel, which will be published by Hordern House in 2012 or 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, and he has recently completed a definitive annotated bibliography of invented, imaginary and apocryphal voyages to be published by Hordern House as the fifth volume of the Encyclopedia. He has also contributed a number of articles on 'missing explorers' to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and has been a consultant to several TV documenteries, including the VPRO film series O'Hanlon's Heroes (2012).