Novelist and historian Richard Hopton reviews Alex Rutherford’s latest novel, Fortune’s Soldier, for Historia. Fortune’s Soldier is Alex Rutherford’s latest Indian historical epic, a successor to the Empire of the Moghul sextet. Set in the years between 1744 and 1757, it takes on a controversial period in Indian history. For old-fashioned British imperialists it represents […]
Fortune’s Soldier by Alex Rutherford
It is 1744, and Nicholas Ballantyne, a young Scotsman dreaming of a life as laird of his ancestral estate, finds himself unexpectedly on the Winchester, a ship bound for Hindustan, seeking to begin a new life as a ‘writer’ on the rolls of the British East India Company. On board, he meets the spirited and […]
Finding empathy – the complexities of writing Robert Clive
How can an author find empathy in a historical figure who is necessary to their story, but whose ‘dark character’ we look back on with distaste? Diana Preston tells Historia how she found a way to write about Robert Clive ‘of India’ in all his complexity. The decision to write a novel centring on Robert […]