Douglas Galbraith

Robert Douglas Galbraith (28 October 1965 – 23 March 2018) was a Scottish historical novelist.

Galbraith was born in 1965 to Alan and Judy Galbraith.^[1] He was educated at The Glasgow Academy and the University of St Andrews, where he read mediaeval history.^[1] He then undertook a PhD at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he met Tomoko Hanasaki.^[1]

After working in the wine trade, he was able to focus on writing after the success of his first novel, The Rising Sun, in 2000.^[1] The novel explored the Scottish trade expedition to Darien in 1698, which ended in financial ruin.^[1] It was awarded the Saltire Award for Best First Novel.^[2][1] His follow-up novel, Crichton, (about the Scottish polymath James Crichton) was offered publication, but his agent rejected the offer, thinking that further offers would be forthcoming.^[1] None were, and it was subsequently only published as an e-book.^[1]

• The Rising Sun, (2000: Picador).
• Crichton, (2010: e-book).
• A Winter in China, (2005: Secker).
• King Henry, (2008: Vintage).
• My Son, My Son, (2012: Vintage).

Galbraith married Tomoko Hanasaki in 1996;^[3] they had two sons, Satomi and Makoto. In 2003, when the boys were six and four, Galbraith returned from a meeting with his publishers to discover that Hanasaki had abducted them and taken them to Japan.^[1] His memoir My Son, My Son is about their abduction.^[4] Despite his best efforts, Galbraith never saw his sons again, and they remain (2022) missing.^[1][5][6]

Galbraith was the uncle of the author and journalist, Patrick Galbraith, whose first book In Search of One Last Song (2022: William Collins) was dedicated to Douglas Galbraith.^{[7][citation needed]}

Galbraith died in 2018, aged 52.^[1]