Peter Keen

Peter Keen was born in West Drayton, Middlesex, in 1928. He was educated at a private college in Uxbridge, Middlesex. There, sport took precedence over his academic studies, learning more about W. C. Grace than W. Shakespeare. He became a tolerable cricket and tennis player. In 1944 he joined the war effort spending four years in aviation. Between 1949 and 1951 he studied photography at Regent Street Polytechnic where his interest in photo-journalism emerged. While he was still a student he became passionate about fly fishing for salmon and sea trout, skiing and horse riding. As a professional freelance photo-journalist he travelled all around the world on assignments for English newspapers and magazines; Picture Post, The Observer, the Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph among others, as well as international publications. He married in 1953 and became the father of two daughters. In 1960 he won the prestigious British Photographer of the Year Award. In 1961 he was sent on extensive assignments to the countries of the USSR; three arrests by the KGB for alleged spying followed and Siberian labour camp was threatened. He met and photographed British defector Guy Burgess. He also smuggled films out of Moscow airport. In 1964 he was assigned by the UN to do photographic coverage of locust migration. In 1965 he toured Africa and South America making documentaries for Oxfam. Leaving London for Somerset in 1977, he produced audio-visual presentations for corprate image use from a converted barn. In 1983 he co-authored  the book River with Ted Hughes the Poet Laureate. He retired in 1992 and moved to Devon to concentrate on writing and photography for field sports publications with emphasis on fly fishing. He has had articles published in Trout and Salmon magazine, Salmon Trout and Sea Trout magazine, The Field, Country Life, Shooting Times, Country Magazine and Waterlog. In 1994 he turned professional as a ghillie and as a fly fishing coach.