His 2005 novel Shalimar the Clown received, in India, the prestigious Hutch Crossword Book Award,
and was, in the UK, a finalist for the Whitbread Book Awards.
Tracy Edwards, who captained the yacht Maiden in the 1989-90 Whitbread Round-the-World Yacht Race,
used Navsat(satellite navigation) and found it had so many technical problems that she often used a magnetic compass instead.