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.
The author's mother came from a Sikh family that fled the Punjab in Partition; later she moved to Berlin and Washington. A fine memoir of family whose identity and roots have been complicate... read more
A brilliant narrative of the interconnected lives of two Renaissance Portuguese men whose travels to India and China unseated contemporary certainties. Dazzling.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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