Patrick French

Patrick French (born 1966) is a British writer and historian, based in London and Delhi. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh where he studied English and American literature.

French is the author of several books including: Younghusband: the Last Great Imperial Adventurer (1994), a biography of Francis Younghusband, The World Is What It Is (2008), an authorised biography of Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in the United States of America, and India: a Portrait: an intimate biography of 1.2 billion people (2010).

During the 1992 general election, French was a Green Party candidate for Parliament. He has sat on the executive committee of the Tibet Support Group UK, and was a founding member of the inter-governmental India-UK Round Table.

Books and awards

At the age of 25, French set off on a trail across Central Asia to retrace the steps of British explorer Francis Younghusband. This resulted in the publication of his first book, Younghusband: the Last Great Imperial Adventurer in 1994. The book went on to win both the Somerset Maugham Award and the Royal Society of Literature's W. H. Heinemann Prize.

Patrick

Patrick may refer to:

Other uses

See also

Democracy in India

India is the seventh largest (by area) and the second most populous country in the world, with roughly one-sixth of its population, of about a billion and a quarter. India is one of the world's oldest civilizations, yet a very young nation. Under Mughal and Rajput control for much of its history until its colonisation by European powers in the mid-eighteenth century. The world's largest democracy by electorate was created after independence in 1947 under the leadership of its nationalist movement, the Indian National Congress.

Elections to its Parliament are held once every 5 years. Currently, Prime minister Narendra Modi is the head of the government, enjoying a majority in the Parliament, while President Pranab Mukherjee, is the head of state. India is a constitutional republic governed under the world's longest written constitution, federally consisting of 29 states and seven centrally administered union territories, with New Delhi as the nation's capital.

The country has six national parties: Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), Indian National Congress (INC), Communist Party of India (CPI), Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). At the level of its states, many regional parties stand for elections to state legislatures, every five years. The Rajya Sabha elections are held every 6 years.