Harini Nagendra’s The Bangalore Detectives Club is set in 1920s colonial Bangalore, where Kaveri, a budding mathematician, stumbles upon a body at an elite event and is pulled into solving a crime, while exploring the city’s bungalows, brothels and bylanes. Harini tells Historia how hard it was to uncover the diverse voices of Indian residents, […]
Enemy of the Raj by Alec Marsh
India, 1937. Intrepid reporter Sir Percival Harris is hunting tigers with his friend, Professor Ernest Drabble. Harris soon bags a man-eater – but later finds himself caught up in a hunt of a different kind… Harris is due to interview the Maharaja of Bikaner, a friend to the Raj, for his London newspaper – and […]
Unforgettable legacies of the East India Company
Historian William Dalrymple’s profile is high at the moment, with an acclaimed book about the East India Company published recently and an exhibition he curated opening this month. We’re delighted that Vayu Naidu has interviewed him for Historia and writes here about Dalrymple’s wide vision, as shown by his writing and his selection of paintings. […]
The Ranas and the Raj
Louise Brown charts the history of the extraordinary Nepalese Rana dynasty and their complicated relationship with the British Raj. Nepal enchants foreigners. I have been captivated by the country since I lived in Kathmandu twenty five years ago, and writing my latest novel, The Himalayan Summer, has taken me back there again. Today, Nepal is […]