Randal Hume Keynes,
OBE,
FLS (born July 29, 1948)[1] is a
British conservationist, author and great-great-grandson of
Charles Darwin. He is the author of the intimate exploration of his famous ancestry, Annie's Box, subtitled Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution (2001), a book about the relationship between Darwin and his daughter
Annie, whose early death deeply affected him and
his views on religion.[2]
He has taken a leading role in the campaign to have
Down House, Darwin's former home, designated a
World Heritage Site.[3]
Keynes is the son of the Hon. Anne Pinsent (
née Adrian) and physiologist
Richard Keynes.[1] He is the great-nephew of the economist
John Maynard Keynes and the brother of the historian and Cambridge professor
Simon Keynes. He is the grandson of the surgeon
Geoffrey Keynes, Nobel Prize-winning physiologist
Edgar Douglas Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian, and
Hester Adrian, Baroness Adrian.
Keynes' son,
Skandar (born 1991), is an actor best known for his role as
Edmund Pevensie in the
Narnia films. He also has a daughter, Soumaya Keynes (born 1989), who has appeared in various productions for
BBC Radio 4.
He is a distinguished supporter of the
British Humanist Association.[4