Simon Everard Digby (17 October 1932 – 10 January 2010) was an English oriental scholar, translator, writer and collector who was awarded the Burton Medal of the Royal Asiatic Society and was a former Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, the Honorary Librarian of the Royal Asiatic Society and Assistant Keeper in the Department of Eastern Art of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
[5] At his death, he left behind a large body of unpublished work, which the trustees of his estate have arranged to be edited and posthumously published.
[9] On his return to London he became a regular reviewer in The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies and The Times Literary Supplement.
The two left Venice and travelled by sea to Rhodes and Anatolia, and then on public transport through Turkey to Tehran, Kerman, Zahidan and Quetta.
Digby was in Karachi when war broke out between India and Pakistan, and here he privately published his book War-Horse and Elephant in the Dehli Sultanate.
In 1972 he was appointed to a post in the Department of Eastern Art of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, which had been created for David McCutchion, who had died before he could take it up.
[12] As an ex-officio member of the Oriental Faculty of the University of Oxford (1972–2000), Digby was responsible for supervising postgraduate students, and gave instruction in Hindi, Urdu and Persian.
He had been due to deliver a talk at the India International Centre entitled "A Runaway Mughal Prince" at the invitation of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage.
A conference held in Digby's honour in June 2014 resulted in the publication of a volume on his historical method, edited by Francesca Orsini and published by Oxford University Press in 2022.
"[20] His early interest in the art of the Indian subcontinent is evidenced in some of his earliest publications, and was sustained throughout his career; this was supplemented by ventures into architecture and numismatics.