Born in 1941 in Devon, England, Keay was educated at Ampleforth College, York and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was a demy (scholar) in Modern History. His tutors included the historian A J P Taylor and the playwright Alan Bennet. He first visited India in 1965 and has been returning there about every two years ever since. After a brief spell as a political correspondent (The Economist), he assisted in the revision of the last edition of John Murray's Handbook to India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka (1975) and wrote Into India, his first book.
