Ruskin BondRuskin Bond was born in 1934 in Kasauli in Punjab, India. His first novel was published when he was 22, A Room on the Roof and it won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. He specialised in short stories of which he wrote more than five hundred. He lives in Mussoorie. Bond was born when India was part of the British Empire.. His father taught English to the Indian princesses of the Indian princely state of Nawanagar and bond lived with his family at the palace when he was a boy.  At the beginning of the Second World War, his father Aubrey Alexander Bond joined the Royal Air Force. When Ruskin was only eight his father left his mother Edith Clarke and married an Indian, Hindu woman called Hari. (In the story, which has lots of autobiographical details, he says it was his mother who married an Indian man after his father died). His father arranged for him to come to New Delhi where he was posted and Ruskin was happy there and describes his childhood as magical. But his father died during the War when Ruskin was only 10. He went to an English style boarding school in Shimla and won a number of writing prizes when he was there. After finishing at Shimla he went to the Channel Islands (close to the French Coast but a possession of the English Crown) because his aunt lived there. He then went to London and worked in a photo studio. When his first novel was a success he used the money to pay his fare back to India. He worked as a writer there and has been a writer ever since.Despite his British ancestry he feels India. He has said about being Indian that race did not make him one, religion did not make him one, but history did. Most of his works deal with small town India, particularly the hill stations where he grew up. He has described small town India as his India. If You Appreciate The Work I’ve Put In HereYou could buy me a coffee https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker (https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker)Become a Patronhttps://www.patreon.com/barcud (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)And you can join my mailing list and get a  free audiobook: https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire (https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire)Music By The Heartwood Institutehttps://bit.ly/somecomeback*** (https://bit.ly/somecomeback***)Most of Ruskin’s stories aren’t ghost stories though he admits a fondness for the work of Lafcadio Haearn, an Irish writer who settled in Japan via the USA and specialised in ghost stories with a Japanese background.  Support the show