Randal Keynes


Randal Hume Keynes, OBE, FLS was a British conservationist, author, and great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin.

Family background

Keynes was born in Cambridge, England. He was the son of the Hon. Anne Pinsent 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 was the brother of two Cambridge professors, Simon and Roger.
Randal Keynes had 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, is a political advisor and former actor best known for his role as Edmund Pevensie in the Narnia films. Their daughter, Soumaya Keynes, is an economics journalist and has hosted podcasts for The Economist and Financial Times.

Life and career

Keynes was educated at Marlborough College and New College, Oxford, where he earned a degree in English with a concentration in Icelandic literature. He was a distinguished supporter of Humanists UK.
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.

The Darwin connection

Keynes was the author of the intimate exploration of his famous ancestry, Annie's Box, subtitled Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution, a book about the relationship between Darwin and his daughter Annie, whose early death deeply affected him. The 2009 film Creation is based on this book.
He took a leading role in the campaign to have Down House, Darwin's former home, designated a World Heritage Site.
He was the author of two Oxford Dictionary of National Biography articles on Anne Darwin and William Erasmus Darwin in 2005.