Simon Digby

Simon Everard Digby (17 October 1932 – 10 January 2010) was an English oriental scholar, translator, writer and collector who was awarded the Burton Medal of the Royal Asiatic Society and was a former Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, the Honorary Librarian of the Royal Asiatic Society and Assistant Keeper in the Department of Eastern Art of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. He was also the foremost British scholar of pre-Mughal India. Early life Digby was born in 1932 at Jabalpur in the Central Provinces, now Madhya Pradesh, and was the grandson of William Digby, a member of the Indian Civil Service who, in the late 19th century, wrote extensively about the poverty created by British rule in India. William Digby was a friend of the Bihar barrister-politician Syed Hasan Imam once the leader of the Indian National Congress. His father was Kenelm George Digby, a judge of the Indian High Court, and his mother was Violet M. Kidd, an accomplished painter. As his father was a friend of J. F. Roxburgh, the first headmaster of Stowe School, Digby was sent to that school (1946–1951) after attending a preparatory school in North Wales. In 1951 he went with his mother on a painting expedition to Delhi, Rajasthan and Kashmir. On his return to Britain he attended Trinity College, Cambridge, (Major and Senior Scholar, Earl of Derby Student),1951–1956; History Tripos, University of Cambridge (1st Class Honours with Distinction) 1956; B.A. (Cantab.) 1956, proceeded M.A. 1962; . Cambridge