Ion Grant Neville Keith-Falconer (5 July 1856 – 11 May 1887) was a Scottish missionary and Arabic scholar, the third son of the 8th Earl of Kintore.

Keith-Falconer was born in Edinburgh. After attending Harrow School and studying at the University of Cambridge, he moved into evangelistic work in London. In 1886, he was appointed Arabic professor at Cambridge, but his career was cut short near Aden while in missionary work. He translated the Fables of Bidpaï. He was an athlete, a champion cyclist and is described as a world cycling champion in 1878.

Background

Keith-Falconer was the third son of the Earl of Kintore and shared his childhood between the ancestral home in Scotland and Brighton on the southern English coast. In 1869, when he was 13, he succeeded in obtaining a place, through examination, at Harrow School, then in countryside north-west of London. He took notes of his lessons in shorthand, which he had taught himself.

Keith-Falconer left Harrow in 1873, having acquired a tutor to teach him mathematics, studying with the Rev Lewis Hensley at his vicarage in Hitchin. As well as trigonometry and algebra and other subjects which seem not to have interested him particularly, he continued cycling and learned to sing. "This," said Hensley, was "for the promotion of the Temperance cause, to which he devoted himself by assisting in the entertainments and addresses of a Temperance Brigade of young men." He lived at 21 Market Hill until he married. He finished his graduate studies with a First and began to read for honours in theological tripos.

Cycling

A teacher at Harrow School, E. E. Bowen, said:

:His bicycling feats were one common subject of interest between us. Bicycles were just coming into fashion when he went to the University; he was an enthusiast in the use of them and an admirable performer; and when he appeared in riding costume at Harrow, with his tall figure mounted on the enormous machine that he rode, it was a sight to see. He kept up the amusement for many years: for two or more he was certainly the best bicyclist in England, and his delight in success only shewed in more than common relief the charming modesty with which he carried his honours. Keith-Falconer also had the money to buy the best bicycles and the leisure to tour extensively. Although he may have been the fastest cyclist in the world, his cycling interests were of secondary importance to him. So amateurish was his attitude that on at least two occasions he forgot about racing engagements and turned up at short notice to win in heroic style.

It was while at Cambridge – where he was elected vice-president of the university bicycle club on 6 June 1874 – that he won his first bicycle races. In a letter to his sister-in-law on 11 November 1874, he wrote:

:Yesterday was the ten-mile bicycle race. Three started. I was one. I ran the distance in 34 minutes, being the fastest time, amateur or professional, on record. I was not at all exhausted... Today I am going to amuse the public by riding an 86-inch bicycle to Trumpington and back. There is a little scale of steps up it, up which I am helped, and then started off and left to myself. It is great fun riding this leviathan: it creates such an extraordinary sensation among the old dons who happen to be passing.

In 1875, he won a club race over the from Hatfield to Cambridge, and on 10 May won a race against Oxford University from St Albans to Oxford, . The following April he won a four-mile (6 km) race, described as "the amateur championship", at Lillie Bridge, setting a record time. On 15 May he won the Cambridge club's race at Fenner's in 3h 20m 37s.

On 11 May 1878 he won the National Cyclists' Union two-mile (3 km) championship at Stamford Bridge. It was probably this race that gave him the status of world champion. Until the creation of the International Cycling Association, the NCU's championships were considered the unofficial championships of the world.

On 28 May 1881, Keith-Falconer went cycle-touring through Oxford, Pangbourne and Harrow, a warm-up to his Land's End – John o'Groats ride, that started on 4 June. Riding from one end of Britain to the other was, in the 19th century, a journey of poor or unmade roads, riding a high-wheeled bicycle with precarious balance and poor brakes. It demanded good weather. When it did not come, Keith-Falconer left Penzance after four days and returned to London and Cambridge.

In 1882, Keith-Falconer rode from Land's End to John o' Groats, the length of Britain, in 13 days. He rode in his last two days. His last race of importance was the amateur championship on 29 July 1882, at Crystal Palace, outside London. He won, seven minutes better than the record, in 2h 43m 58s.

Keith-Falconer's views on cycling were not always those shared by cyclists of lesser opportunity. On 20 August 1881 he wrote to his friend Mr Charrington, with whom he worked in the East End of London (see below):

:It is an excellent thing to encourage an innocent sport (such as bicycling) which keeps young fellows out of the public-houses, music halls and gambling hells and all the other traps that are ready to catch them. It is a great advantage to enter for a few races in public, and not merely to ride on the road for exercise, because in the former case one has to train oneself and this involves abstinence from beer and wine and tobacco, and early going to bed and early rising, and gets one's body into a really vigorous, healthy state. As to betting, nearly all Clubs forbid it, strictly... A bicycle race-course is as quiet as a public science lecture. and so obtained the means of getting more bread for his mother and his sisters. Now they were completely destitute. The boy was accompanied home. Home! It was a wretched attic, in one of the most dilapidated houses. It was a wretchedly cold and dismal day. In the broken-down grate the dead embers of yesterday's firing remained. On the table, in a piece of newspaper, were a few crumbs. 'My good woman,' said Mr Charrington [one of the mission's members], 'why don't you open the window?' 'Oh,' she replied, 'you would not say that if you had nothing to eat and had no fire to warm you.' The family was relieved. On 18 November he wrote to his mother:

:I doubt whether anyone could leave here long without a weakening of all his faculties. I read Arabic for several hours a day, and a native fikih, or schoolmaster, comes daily to instruct me. Aden is not without its disadvantages as a mission station. The climate is very enervating and at the same time there is no hill-station anywhere near for the missionaries to go and recruit; but possibly after time such a hill-station will be opened. The relations between the English and the neighbouring tribes become more satisfactory as time goes on.

He and his wife first lived near Crater Pass, overlooking Crater City. He distributed scriptures in the town and read publicly from an Arabic Bible. He then moved to Sheikh Othman, which had wells, a better climate and access to the interior by camel trails.

Personal life and death

Keith-Falconer married Gwendolen Bevan, daughter of the banker Robert Cooper Lee Bevan, in Cannes on 4 March 1884. They had their honeymoon in southern France and in Italy, where they inspected the remains of Pompeii before moving to 5 Salisbury Villas, Station Road, Cambridge.

He died in Aden after repeated bouts of malaria for which there was no cure. He was 30. A memorial church to him there opened 10 years later.