Randal Keynes

British humanist

Edgar Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian (grandfather)
Hester Adrian, Baroness Adrian (grandmother)
Charles Darwin
(great-great-grandfather)

FamilyKeynes

Randal Hume Keynes, OBE, FLS (/ˈkeɪnz/ KAYNZ; 29 July 1948 – 26 March 2023) was a British conservationist, author, and great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin.

Family background

Keynes was born in Cambridge, England. He is the son of the Hon. Anne Pinsent (née Adrian) and physiologist Richard Keynes. His maternal grandparents were Hester Adrian, Baroness Adrian, mental health worker, and Edgar Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian, electrophysiologist and recipient of the 1932 Nobel Prize for Physiology. His paternal grandfather was the surgeon Geoffrey Keynes, brother to the economist John Maynard Keynes. Randal Keynes is the brother of two Cambridge professors, Simon (historian) and Roger (medical scientist).

Randal Keynes has two children with Zelfa Cecil Hourani, also from a prominent intellectual family, originally from Lebanon. Hourani's father, Cecil, was an advisor to the late Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba, and his two brothers were Albert, a major historian of the Middle East, and George, philosopher, historian, and classicist. Randal and Zelfa's son, Skandar Keynes (born 1991), is a political advisor and former actor best known for his role as Edmund Pevensie in the Narnia films. They also have a daughter, Soumaya Keynes (born 1989), who has appeared in various productions for BBC Radio 4.

Life and career

Keynes was educated at Marlborough College and New College, Oxford. He is a distinguished supporter of Humanists UK.^[2]

He campaigned successfully against the redevelopment of King's Cross station and for the preservation of the Caledonian Road neighbourhood in central London. He recalls one of the turning points as his persuasion of two members of the House of Lords to ask the government to guarantee the funding of the project; when the ministers declined to, the bill fell.^[3]

The Darwin connection

Keynes is the author of the intimate exploration of his famous ancestry, Annie's Box, subtitled Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution (2001), a book about the relationship between Darwin and his daughter Annie, whose early death deeply affected him.^[4] The 2009 film Creation is based on this book.

He has taken a leading role in the campaign to have Down House, Darwin's former home, designated a World Heritage Site.^[5]

He was the author of two Oxford Dictionary of National Biography articles on Anne Darwin and William Erasmus Darwin^[6] in 2005.

Ancestry

Ancestors of Randal Keynes

16. Dr. John Keynes

8. John Neville Keynes

17. Anna Maynard Neville

4. Sir Geoffrey Keynes

18. Rev. John Brown

9. Florence Ada Brown

19. Ada Haydon Ford

2. Richard Keynes

20. Charles Darwin

10. George Darwin

21. Emma Wedgwood

5. Margaret Elizabeth Darwin

22. Charles Meredith du Puy

11. Maud du Puy

23. Ellen Reynolds

1. Randal Keynes

24. Emperor Adrian

12. Alfred Douglas Adrian

25. Selina Anne Douglas

6. Edgar Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian

26. Charles Howard Barton

13. Flora Lavinia Barton

27. Amelia Swaine

3. Hon. Anne Adrian

28. Richard Steele Pinsent

14. Hume Chancellor Pinsent

29. Catherine Agnes Ross

7. Hester Agnes Pinsent

30. Rev. Richard Parker

15. Ellen Frances Parker

31. Elizabeth Coffin

References

^ "FamilySearch.org". Retrieved 7 July 2023.
^ "Distinguished Supporters". British Humanist Association. Retrieved 26 April 2012.
^ The Secret History of Our Streets, a 2012 BBC and Open University co-production, both a series of six-hour-long television programmes (in which he is interviewed in episode 2, "Caledonian Road") and also a book.
^ Turney, Jon (8 June 2002). "Darwin's lost daughter". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 February 2008.
^ Boxer, Sarah (18 November 2005). "An Image of Darwin, Carrying on His Work". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 February 2008.
^ Keynes, Randal (2004). "Darwin, William Erasmus (1839–1914)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/94741.