Roy Moxham, a former tea plantation supervisor and author, has died at age 86. In his later years, he became known for his historical writings focused on tea and India, a country he visited frequently throughout his life.
Moxham’s most acclaimed work was The Great Hedge of India, published in 2001 and translated into multiple Indian languages. The book documented a massive thorny hedge spanning 2,500 miles across British India that served as a customs line, guarded by 12,000 men for the East India Company. Following Indian independence in 1947, the structure largely vanished, but Moxham spent years searching for remaining fragments during his travels to the country. He eventually located a surviving section and removed a branch, which is now preserved by his family.
His other published works included A Brief History of Tea in 2003, which examined the political and horticultural complexities of tea cultivation and trade. Outlaw, released in 2010, explored the life of Phoolan Devi, India’s former “bandit queen” and politician, drawing on Moxham’s personal friendship with her prior to her assassination in 2001. His final book, The Theft of India in 2015, analyzed European colonial rivalries and their consequences for the Indian population.
Born in Evesham, Worcestershire, Moxham began his career in agriculture after placing an advertisement in a newspaper seeking work in African tea or tobacco industries during the early 1960s. He worked as a tea plantation supervisor in Nyasaland, now Malawi, overseeing 1,000 female workers, and later sold agricultural machinery across East Africa. After returning to the United Kingdom in the mid-1970s, he opened an African art gallery in Covent Garden, London, before pursuing formal training in book and paper conservation at Camberwell College of Arts in 1978. He subsequently worked as a conservator at Canterbury Cathedral Archive and Senate House Library at the University of London until his retirement in 2005.
Moxham is survived by two brothers, a nephew, three nieces, and other family members.
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