Robin Saikia

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Robin Saikia is a British author and actor educated at Winchester College and Merton College, Oxford.

Books

Robin Saikia wrote The Venice Lido, the first ever full-length historical and cultural guide to Venice's glamorous beach resort, from its early days as a primitive settlement until its heyday as the setting for Death in Venice and as the venue for the Venice Film Festival. The book charts the antics of many of the more disreputable visitors, including Byron and Oswald Mosley, but also celebrates the natural beauties of the Lido and its symbolic role as the outer boundary of the Serenissima (Blue Guides, May 2011).^[1] Other works include Blue Guide Literary Companion London, an anthology of poetry and prose written in and about Britain's capital along with Saikia's introductory essays. The book contains pieces by Julian Maclaren-Ross, Ian Fleming, Anthony Powell, the Prince of Wales and many others. Though criticised in the Spectator for being deeply rooted in the past, the anthology was hailed by popular historian Giles Milton as 'a literary masterpiece'. Saikia's Blue Guide Hay-on-Wye is a historical and cultural exploration of the Anglo-Welsh border town of Hay-on-Wye, famous for its self-crowned king, Richard Booth, for its book dealers, and as the venue of the annual Guardian Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts (Blue Guides 2010).^[2] He also wrote, for Blue Guides, Blue Guide Italy Food Companion, a portable glossary and phrasebook accompanied by historical and cultural essays on Italian cuisine. Other works include The Horn Book: A Victorian Sex Manual (Saucy Book Company, 2008),^[3] Munich: A Third Reich Tourist Guide (Foxley Books, 2008)^[4] and A Commentary on Ten Ancient Arabic Poems (Bayswater Press, 2008). In The Red Book: The Membership List of The Right Club, Saikia analyses the activities of Captain Archibald Maule Ramsay's 'Right Club', a right wing group operating in London shortly before the Second World War (Foxley Books, July 2010). The book contains a full facsimile of the ledger in which Ramsay recorded the members of the club. It also reveals that the White Russian nobleman, Prince Yurka Galitzine, joined the club shortly before the outbreak of war but swiftly renounced his right wing views after his experiences in 1944 when, as member of an Intelligence unit in the Political Warfare Department of SHAEF,^[5] he was tasked with an investigation of the atrocities at the Natzweiler-Rudhof death camp in Alsace.

Theatre

Roles include Dove in the Nick Warburton play, Fridays When It Rains, first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and adapted for the stage by the British actress and director Vicki Carpenter, who appeared as Connie opposite Saikia's Dove. (Iambic Arts, Brighton). Saikia has also appeared as Roger de Brito in T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral and Decius in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, both with the Hampstead Players.

Journalism

Recent journalism and travel writing includes Venice for Families in The Guardian and feature articles on music, art dealing and espionage in Time Out 1000 Things To Do In London For Under £10 Saikia is an active campaigner for a radical reform of the Family Division of the UK High Court. He hosts a weekly radio show, the Robin Saikia Show, on the community radio station OnFM that broadcasts in Central London on 101.4FM.

Lectures

'The Venice Lido' (Italian Cultural Institute, London); 'Ladies of the Lido' (London Ladies Club); Anthologizing London (Hampstead Literary Hour); 'Scraping and Screeching in Salzburg: Mozart's response to liturgical reform.' (Hampstead Christian Study Group).

Papers

'The role of the arts in post-conflict reconstruction' (for PCRU, FCO).

References

External links

The Robin Saikia Show on OnFM London Radio Robin Saikia's personal website The Venice Lido by Robin Saikia Robin Saikia's author page at Blue Guides