Three Quarters of a Footprint

Joe Roberts was born in Bath in 1958. Educated in England, in his twenties he lived in America working as a bookseller in Manhattan and a baker in Austin, Texas, returning to Bath to continue work as a bookseller and restaurant cook. In 1990 he travelled to southern India for seven months, the first of many trips to a country he visited regularly and wrote about for the rest of his life - and where he met his wife, Emma. Three-Quarters of a Footprint was first published by Bantam in 1994. It was followed by The House of Blue Lights and Abdul’s Taxi to Kalighat and Bengal, The Cold Weather, 1873, about Edward Lear’s visit to India. He also taught creative writing at Bath Spa University and Ashoka University. A gifted cook, talker and maker of friends, Joe’s family table (he and Emma had three sons) was always a place for good food and lively conversation. Joe’s interests were broad, but his real passion was always for India. At the time of his unexpected death in 2023 he was working on a childhood memoir.