John Eaton Calthorpe Blofeld (2 April 1913 to 7 June 1987) was a writer on Asian thought and religion, especially Chinese Buddhism and Taoism. He was born in London and educated at Haileybury College before matriculating at Downing College in 1931 studying Moral Sciences. He left the College in February 1933 with the intention of travelling to China and taught at Munsang College in Hong Kong before obtaining a teaching position at Hebei (Hopei) Institute in Tianjin (Tientsin) in 1935, where he taught for two years before the Japanese occupation in 1937 (which occurred when he was temporarily back in England). He returned to China soon afterwards but applied, in 1938, to return to Downing College to complete his degree. He had been given permission to return to Downing in October 1939 to complete his remaining five terms, but was prevented by the outbreak of war, instead starting a course studying Japanese, Malay, Burmese and Chinese at the School of Oriental Studies in London (which relocated soon afterwards to Christ's College in Cambridge). Blofeld was commissioned in the Army in Oct 1940, initially at the Intelligence Corps Training Centre at Winchester and, from December 1940, at the War Office, where he rose to the rank of Staff Captain. He served at the Ministry of Information from January to April 1942 and was Attache (Cultural Relations) at the Embassy in Chungking from then until the end of 1945. In January 1946, he was appointed by the Chinese Government to a Research Fellowship on Sine-Indian relations and soon afterwards again requested to return to complete his Cambridge degree. Due to the four extra terms granted under the University's Wartime Regulations in lieu of military service, he was required to complete only one remaining term. In June 1946, after obtaining a First in the Preliminary Examination in Oriental Languages (Chinese), he qualified for his BA and was subsequently awarded his MA Cantab. After leaving Beijing before the imminent Communist takeover, he moved with his family to Hong Kong and, from 1951, to Thailand, where he taught at the University in Bangkok. He published extensively (sometimes under the pseudonym Chu Ch'an) on Asian thinking, religion and culture from 1947 until his death and worked for the United Nations from 1961 until his retirement in 1974. He wrote two autobiographies: 'Wheel of Life: The Autobiography of a Western Buddhist' (1959) and 'My Journey in Mystic China: Old Pu's Travel Diary' (originally published in Chinese in 1990). He died in Bangkok, Thailand, aged 74.