Roger Took

Roger F. Took was an art historian, museum curator, author and convicted child sex offender who lived in London, Ireland, and Russia. In the course of his career, he ran several museums in England, was a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and a former director of the Barbican Art Gallery. He attended Sandhurst and the Courtauld Institute. He married in 1983, and in 1985 founded Artangel, an institution within the field of contemporary art. In December 2003, Running with Reindeer: Encounters in Russian Lapland, Roger Took's detailed description of life on Russia's Lapland and Kola Peninsula, was published in hardback. This book was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. Took was most recently acclaimed as an expert on the mediaeval Russian fur trade.