Royston Ellis

Royston Ellis is a veteran travel writer based in Sri Lanka since 1980 from where he writes on Indian Ocean destinations for international travel and inflight magazines. He is the original author of the Bradt Travel Guides to Sri Lanka, Mauritius and the Maldives, as well of India By Rail.

Ellis was born in Pinner, England on 10 February 1941. On leaving school at 16 he rapidly won fame as a performer on television and stage of his own poetry performed to rock music (Rocketry) accompanied by musicians such as The Shadows, The Beetles (it was Ellis who suggested the spelling Beatles), and Jimmy Page.

He left England in 1961 intent on a life of travel and writing, performing in Moscow before settling in the Channel Islands for three years, after which he moved to Las Palmas, Canary Islands, where he edited the island’s English language newspaper. He then lived on Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands before building a log cabin on a hillside in Dominica, Windward Islands. After the cabin was blown away by a hurricane in 1979, he moved to Sri Lanka. He writes a weekly blog Tropical Topics available through www.roystonellis.com/blog.