Humans in the World featuring Katie Hickman

Welcome to the eighth in our Humans in the World series, in which we focus on someone who has inspired, delighted or taught us on our travels. After all, perhaps our favourite part of travel is people. Fellow travellers and professional peers; incredible locals; our tour leaders, national tour guides and agents.

Such as Katie Hickman; British historian, bestselling novelist and travel writer, and specialist speaker on A Cruise Through History Along the Hooghly: Travellers, Traders and Truth Seekers in India. Her highly acclaimed history of British women in pre-Raj India, She-Merchants, Buccaneers and Gentlewomen, was published in 2019. Katie also has a very long, interfamilial connection with Jon Baines himself - watch the video below to find out how!

Katie is the author of nine other books, including two bestselling works of non-fiction: 'Daughters of Britannia', about the lives and times of British diplomatic wives (which was in the Sunday Times bestseller lists for ten months and a twenty-part series for BBC Radio 4) and 'Courtesans', about English eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women of pleasure. Her most recent work, 'Brave Hearted: The Dramatic Story of Women of the American West', was the winner of the 2023 WILLA Award for Nonfiction. Her other works include a trilogy of historical novels - 'The Aviary Gate', 'The Pindar Diamond', 'The House at Bishopsgate' - which between them have been translated into twenty languages.

Born into a diplomatic family, Katie Hickman had a peripatetic childhood, growing up in Spain, Ireland, Singapore and South America. She now lives on a barge on the River Thames.

Meet Katie below!