The daughter of Lord Mountbatten, Lady P was also Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen and married to David Hicks. This is a lavishly illustrated biog by her daughter.
Tracing the rise and spread of Buddhism from its roots, WD shows the dominance of Indian culture in the ancient and early medieval worlds. The author's customary grace, zest and elegance ren... read more
Before the East India Company took hold, the dazzling Mughal courts received a raggle-taggle caravan of C16th and C17th merchants, priests and adventurers.
How the daughter of Babur, first Mughal Emperor, wrangled her way out of the harem (for a while) to travel around India, to Persia and beyond. Based on her own account.
He ruled an area of the Indian subcontinent greater than anyone until the British 2000 years later; famously he renounced war for Buddhism and promoted religious toleration throughout his mu... read more
The 40-year relationship between the prodigious writer and scholar (biographer of Gandhi, amongst other things, and a JS customer) and his original editor at Oxford University Press.
Clever mice, cunning crocodiles, loquacious tortoises: many of the stories from the Panchatantra made their way into the fables of Aesop and even La Fontaine. Here are a handful, retold by t... read more
800 years of cave paintings, from the C2nd BC to the C6th CE: a revised edition with digitally restored images, and a new introduction by Dalrymple who has been researching the history of Bu... read more
The British empire observed through the lens of a single day: the 29th September 1923, when the Mandate for Palestine became law and the British empire reached its maximum extent, just as i... read more
Moraes was an Indian poet educated in London and Oxford. This is an account of his wanderings as a very young man through northern India, Nepal and Sikkim in 1959, when military tensions wit... read more
An optimistic account of a successful tiger conservation programme in India: good non-fiction with many gorgeous illustrations. Large format, much information. Ages 7-9.
Chintz, calico and muslin; paisley, embroidery; jodhpurs, turbans - all have been used by designers such as Schiaparelli, Poiret, Balmain, Rhodes, Saint Laurent, Gauliter, McQueen...
Indian folk rituals and rites, customs and celebrations, presented through a sequence of photographic portraits. With contributions by Anuradha Roy, Catherine Clement and Kuha Kopariha.
A fascinating exploration of travel in C17th India: merchant-cum-gentleman Thomas Roe is whisked away as ambassador to Mughal India where he plays the dangerous (and often disappointing) gam... read more
Indian family drama revolving around an ambitious and bright but easily distracted daughter who hasn't yet heard that her father has died. Fraught, lyrical, set against the backdrop of relig... read more
Amrit Kaur was a Punjabi princess who lived in Paris in the 1930s, and who sold her jewellery to help save Jews. Arrested by the Gestapo, she died in a concentration camp.
From the author of the best book on Dreyfus, this is a biography of the Indian monk who inspired Freud, Gandhi, and Tagore and introduced Westerners to yoga and the Vedanta.
Unlike Dalrymple's The Anarchy, this deals just with the East India Company's early years. Howarth argues that it was more European than English in spirit.
This is a fascinating illustrated book on the often elaborate and arresting labels used by British textile manufacturers when exporting to India during the Raj.
A brilliant narrative of the interconnected lives of two Renaissance Portuguese men whose travels to India and China unseated contemporary certainties. Dazzling.
An anthology of the writings by the often overlooked women of the Raj, many of whom flourished in India - Fanny Parks, Emily Eden et alia. A fascinating counterpoint to the stereotypical vie... read more
Ajay and his friends find an abandoned printing press and set up their newspaper - the Mumbai Sun. Their investigations naturally get them into hot water - will justice and the pursuit of tr... read more
Forster is always undoing, and no less so in this account of the remote princely court of Dewas in Madhya Pradesh, where he visited and worked as private secretary to the Maharajah in the ea... read more