Showing results for "Anita Anand" in All Categories

The first comprehensive and authoritative history of the Koh-i-Noor, arguably the most celebrated and mythologised jewel in the world. On 29 March 1849, the 10-year-old Maharajah of the Punjab was ushered into the magnificent Mirrored Hall at the great Fort in Lahore. There, in a public ceremony, the frightened but dignified child handed over to the British East India Company in a formal act of submission not only swathes of the richest land in India but also arguably the single most valuable object in the subcontinent: the celebrated Koh-i-Noor diamond.

The Patient Assassin covers the events of the Amritsar Massacre of 1919 in which hundreds of lives were lost when the army opened fire on a crowd with no warnings. An injured survivor, Udham Singh, vowed, wiping blood-soaked earth onto his forehead, that he would kill the men responsible. The Patient Assassin follows him through Africa and the US and across Europe to end up in front of Sir Michael O'Dwyer, who had sent the men to attack.

In 1876 Sophia Duleep Singh was born into Indian royalty. Her father, Maharajah Duleep Singh, was heir to the Kingdom of the Sikhs, one of the greatest empires of the Indian subcontinent. Sophia transcended her heritage to devote herself to battling injustice and inequality, a far cry from the life to which she was born. Her causes were the struggle for Indian Independence, the fate of the lascars, the welfare of Indian soldiers in the First World War--and, above all, the fight for female suffrage.