Peter Mayne

Who was Peter Mayne?

Peter Mayne was an English travel writer who wrote about his experiences in North Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Greece. His father, C. Mayne, was Principal of Rajkumar College in Rajkot, India from 1903 to 1923, and later became guardian of the young Maharajah of Jaipur. After attending school in England, Mayne returned to India. Following Partition, he served as deputy secretary to Pakistan's Ministry of Refugees and Rehabilitation. In 1949, he moved to Morocco; four years later, his first and probably best-known book, an account of his residence in the city's Medina, was published as The Alleys of Marrakesh in England and the United States. Later editions of the book have appeared under the alternative title A Year in Marrakesh.

In The Narrow Smile: A Journey Back to the North-West Frontier Mayne's subject was a journey through the Paktun tribal lands lying between Afghanistan and Pakistan; the book is currently available for free download in different formats from the Internet Archive. The Saints of Sind, about the "pirs" or saints and dervishes of Pakistan's Sind region was followed two years later, after Mayne moved to Greece, by The Private Sea, a seemingly rambling but enchanting book about a visit of a few weeks to the island of Poros.