Kathryn Tidrick

Kathryn Tidrick is an English historian, psychologist and writer. She is a specialist in British colonial history and the history of political institutions in Asia. Her works have received praises from other historians. William Dalrymple called her "the author of two witty studies of British orientalism" in the Financial Times.

Tidrick was born and grew up in Britain. She studied psychology at university, not history, pursuing research. She obtained her doctoral degree from the University of London

She has written articles for the London Review of Books, and for the New York Times

Gandhi - A Political and Spiritual Life Tidrick's work on Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's life has received much attention. In her book Tidrick argues that Gandhi's student life in London was his decisive and formative period where he acquired the ideas which would be put to use until his death. This point of view differs from more conventional understandings of Gandhi's intellectual inheritance that locates his ideas in Ancient India.

William Dalrymple called her work "Brilliant" and remarked that her research brought certain unexplored dimensions of Gandhi's intellectual life to light such as the influence of occultists of London "she locates the roots of Gandhi’s thought in the lunatic spiritualist fringe of late-Victorian England, among the occultists, high fibre-ists and mediums who flourished in late 19th-century London". |sign=|source=

Selected works Heart Beguiling Araby - The English Romance with Arabia Empire and the English Character Gandhi - A Political and Spiritual Life ‘The Masai and Their Masters: A Psychological Study of District Administration’, African Studies Review, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Apr. 1980), pp. 15–31.