Author: Narendra Singh Sarila
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857715283
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 317
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Book Description
Princely India in the 1930s and '40s enjoyed a golden age which already seems immeasurably distant from the thriving, modern nation of today. These were halcyon days of bejewelled and autocratic Maharajas; life in marble palaces mirrored in lakes or in mighty stone fortresses on craggy hills; tiger hunts on elephant-back and elephant hunts on foot; and lavish house parties ringing with the sound of polo and music and laughter.As heir apparent to the central Indian kingdom of Sarila, Narendra Singh Sarila was born into the very heart of this society and his life offers a unique vista on a vanished world. This warm and unsentimental personal history beautifully evokes life at the end of the British Raj in vivid and colourful detail. But it also reveals how, despite their position, Sarila and his family embraced the changes occasioned by Independence and adapted rapidly to its new demands.In 1947, at the age of just 21, Sarila put his childhood concerns firmly behind him when he became Aide de Camp to Lord Mountbatten, the last British Governor General of India. Once a Prince in Sarila draws on his experiences and his detailed diaries from the period and includes intimate and revealing portraits of Lord Mountbatten and his wife, Edwina, as well as their many prestigious visitors - including Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel among other top civil and military leaders, both British and Indian."Once a Prince in Sarila" is a unique history of a forgotten world and Sarila is a sensitive and perceptive guide to India's transition from Empire to an independent nation.
Author: Julie E. Hughes
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674074785
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329
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Book Description
Animal Kingdoms reveals the far-reaching cultural, political, and environmental importance of hunting in colonial India. Julie E. Hughes explores how Indian princes relied on their prowess as hunters of prized game to advance personal status, solidify power, and establish links with the historic battlefields and legendary deeds of their ancestors.
Author: Hella Pick
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 1474613764
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
'Memoirs of such richness are rare . . . a joy' JAMES NAUGHTIE 'A remarkable personal journey, by one of the great political correspondents of our world - eloquent, enlightening, exhilarating' PHILIPPE SANDS A trailblazer for women in journalism, Hella Pick arrived in Britain in 1939 as a child refugee from Austria. Over nearly four decades she covered the volatile global scene, first in West Africa, followed by America and long periods in Europe. In her thirty-five years with the Guardian she reported on the end of Empire in West Africa, the assassination of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King's march from Selma to Montgomery, the Vietnam peace negotiation in Paris, the 1968 student revolt in France, the birth of the Solidarity movement in Poland, and the closing stages of the Cold War. A request for coffee on board a Soviet ship anchored in Malta led to a chat with Mikhail Gorbachev. A request for an interview with Willy Brandt led to a personal friendship that enabled her to come to terms with Germany's Nazi past. Her book is also a clarion call for preserving professionalism in journalism at a time when social media muddy the waters between fact and fiction, and between reporting and commentary. INVISIBLE WALLS tells the dramatic story of how a Kindertransport survivor won the trust and sometimes the friendship of world leaders, and with them a wide range of remarkable men and women. It speaks frankly of personal heartache and of a struggle over her Jewish identity. It is also the intensely touching story of how, despite a gift for friendship and international recognised achievements as a woman journalist, a continuing sense of personal insecurity has confronted her with a series of invisible walls.
Author: Andrew Lownie
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1643137921
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 362
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Book Description
The intimate story of a unique marriage spanning the heights of British glamour and power that descends into infidelity, manipulation, and disaster through the heart of the twentieth century. DICKIE MOUNTBATTEN: A major figure behind his nephew Philip's marriage to Queen Elizabeth II and instrumental in the royal family taking the Mountbatten name, he was Supreme Allied Commander of South East Asia during World War II and the last Viceroy of India. EDWINA MOUNTBATTEN: Once the richest woman in Britain—and a playgirl who enjoyed numerous affairs—she emerged from World War II as a magnetic and talented humanitarian worker who was loved throughout the world. From British high society to the South of France, from the battlefields of Burma to the Viceroy's House, The Mountbattens is a rich and filmic story of a powerful partnership, revealing the truth behind a carefully curated legend. Was Mountbatten one of the outstanding leaders of his generation, or a man over-promoted because of his royal birth, high-level connections, film-star looks and ruthless self-promotion? What is the true story behind controversies such as the Dieppe Raid and Indian Partition, the love affair between Edwina and Nehru, and Mountbatten's assassination in 1979?
Author: Robert Aldrich
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526142716
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 459
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Book Description
With original case studies of a more than a dozen countries, Monarchies and decolonisation in Asia offers new perspectives on how both European monarchs who reigned over Asian colonies and Asian royal houses adapted to decolonisation. As colonies became independent states (and European countries, and other colonial powers, lost their overseas empires), monarchies faced the challenges of decolonisation, republicanism and radicalism. These studies place dynasties – both European and ‘native’ – at the centre of debate about decolonisation and the form of government of new states, from the sovereigns of Britain, the Netherlands and Japan to the maharajas of India, the sultans of the East Indies and the ‘white rajahs’ of Sarawak. It provides new understanding of the history of decolonisation and of the history of modern monarchy.
Author: Narayani Basu
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 9386797690
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 675
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Book Description
With his initial plans for an independent India in tatters, the desperate viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, turned to his seniormost Indian civil servant, Vappala Pangunni Menon—or VP—giving him a single night to devise an alternative, coherent and workable plan for independence. Menon met his stringent deadline, presenting the Menon Plan, which would change the map of the world forever. Menon was unarguably the architect of the modern Indian state. Yet startlingly little is known about this bureaucrat, patriot and visionary. In this definitive biography, Menon’s great-granddaughter, Narayani Basu, rectifies this travesty. She takes us through the highs and lows of his career, from his determination to give women the right to vote; to his strategy, at once ruthless and subtle, to get the princely states to accede to India; to his decision to join forces with the Swatantra Party; to his final relegation to relative obscurity. Equally, the book candidly explores the man behind the public figure— his unconventional personal life and his private conflicts, which made him channel his energy into public service. Drawing from documents—scattered, unread and unresearched until now—and with unprecedented access to Menon’s papers and his taped off-the-record and explosively frank interviews—this remarkable biography of VP Menon not only covers the life and times of a man unjustly consigned to the footnotes of history but also changes our perception of how India, as we know it, came into being.
Author: Mallika Ravikumar
Publisher: Hachette India
ISBN: 9391028594
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 537
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Book Description
Only two months to freedom. A jigsaw of around 565* princely states. At the stroke of midnight on 15 August 1947, India could emerge as a united nation. Or disintegrate into several pieces. On 3 June 1947, Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India, makes a historic announcement. After two centuries of being a colony, India would finally become an independent nation on 15 August 1947. Yet there is no India as we know it today, only a patchwork of territories forming British India, and kingdoms ruled by maharajas and nawabs who had pledged their allegiance to the British Crown. The rulers are given three choices: accede to India, join Pakistan, or remain free. While many of the nearly 600 rulers unite with India, some with larger kingdoms decide to either wait for a better bargain, negotiate terms for joining Pakistan, or use the opportunity to give flight to their lofty ambitions. As the sun is poised to set on the British Empire, the future of India hangs in the balance. What unfolds in those nerve-racking last days of the Raj? In a gripping account, highlighting the key events and personalities of the time, this thoroughly researched book introduces young adults and older readers to the dramatic saga of how a great nation was forged. *For why 565, see page i
Author: John Zubrzycki
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1805263099
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 362
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Book Description
The dramatic true story of the betrayal of hundreds of Indian princely states by both the departing British and the new Congress government. In July 1947, India's last Viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten, stood before New Delhi's Chamber of Princes to deliver the most important speech of his career. He had just three weeks to convince over 550 sovereign princely states--some tiny, some the size of Britain--to become part of a free India. Once Britain's most faithful allies, the princes could choose between joining India or Pakistan, or declaring independence. This is a saga of intrigue, brinkmanship and broken promises, wrought by Mountbatten and two of independent India's founding fathers: the country's most senior civil servant, V.P. Menon, and Congress strongman Vallabhbhai Patel. What India's architects described as a 'bloodless revolution' was anything but, as violence engulfed Kashmir and Indian troops crushed Hyderabad's dreams of independence. Most princes accepted the inevitable, exchanging their power for guarantees of privileges and titles in perpetuity. But these dynasties were still led to extinction--not by the sword, but by political expediency--leaving them with little more than fading memories of a glorified past.
Author: Nayantara Pothen
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 8184756011
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 267
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Book Description
New Delhi was purpose-built to trumpet the supremacy of the British Raj and inaugurated in 1931. Instead it came to represent a fading imperial dream in the two decades that followed. In the heyday of the British Raj, strict social and racial hierarchies governed the social life of the city’s ruling elites. And the frivolity of New Delhi’s high society was kept in check by a faithful adherence to etiquette and protocol in everyday life. For example, the sixteen-button glove at a formal viceregal dinner party was of great importance as a means of maintaining the authority of the Raj. But the 1930s and 1940s were a period of transition. The political shifts associated with India’s journey to self-government echoed in the social codes of conduct adopted by the Indian elites of New Delhi, and undermining the Raj’s pomp became a legitimate means of challenging its authority. Closely examining the role of social ritual, interaction and behaviour in the shaping of the city and its elite groups, Glittering Decades tells the story of New Delhi and its privileged inhabitants between 1931 and 1952.
Author: Chandrika Kaul
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137445963
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
Presenting a communicational perspective on the British empire in India during the 20th century, the book seeks to examine how, and explain why, British proconsuls, civil servants and even the monarch George V, as well as Indian nationalists, interacted with the media, primarily British and American, and with what consequences.
