Bijan Omrani is a British historian, journalist, teacher, barrister and author of Persian descent. His work ranges from Classical scholarship to current affairs across Asia.
Omrani is related to one of the British Army officers responsible for demarcating the northern boundary of Afghanistan in 1885 and surveying Afghan tribal territories in the North West Frontier Province, the artist and surveyor Lt Richard Eyles Galindo. His paternal family is from north-western Iran, and his maternal one from England, though with the British Empire in India in the 18th–19th century. He is married to Samantha Knights QC, a barrister at Matrix Chambers.
Career
Omrani taught Classics at Eton College and Westminster School where he contributed new Latin verse to school ceremonies. He is currently working as the editor of the Asian Affairs journal, since 2014. He was called to the Bar in 2018. He also lectures at the British Museum, Royal Society for Asian Affairs, SOAS, King's College London, and the Pakistan Society. He is a trustee of the . He is the author of several books, as well as a frequent contributor for specialised articles pertaining the Afghanistan-Pakistan border problems. He has previously questioned the legal basis of the Durand Agreement but now he considers it to be valid but unsatisfactory, and that there is an urgent need for a wider regional solution to the problem perhaps based on a recognition of the line but combined with shared sovereignty in the neighbouring tribal areas. Omrani was interviewed by France 24 in 2011 about the Afghan-Pakistani border problems, and was also featured in The New York Times in 2011, after an incident on the Pakistani border. His recent book, Caesar's Footprints: Journeys to Roman Gaul, has the distinction of being endorsed both by the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, as well as the French Prime MinisterÉdouard Philippe, who took the book to read whilst on the road campaigning during the European Elections in May 2019. Omrani was interviewed about the book on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme after its UK launch in June 2017. The book was shortlisted in 2018 for the American Library in Paris Book Award, for "the most distinguished book of the year, written and published in English, about France or the French." He is currently undertaking doctoral research at the University of Exeter.
Books
Afghanistan, A Companion and Guide,
Asia Overland: Tales of Travel on the Trans-Siberian and Silk Road
Address to the Horatian Society, published in the proceedings of the Society
Awards
Caesar's Footprints - Shortlisted for the American Library in Paris Book Award 2018, for "the most distinguished book of the year, written and published in English, about France or the French."
BBC Radio 3 Sonnet Prize, 2001, for a sonnet on "Holy Baptism".
