Below the Peacock Fan: First Ladies of the Raj


Marian Fowler - 1987
    Emily Eden, Charlotte Canning, Edith Lytton and Mary Curzon were well-born, cultivated women who experienced the extremes of decadence in a country gripped by poverty. Emily Eden imagined an India of dazzling splendor but found a land of dark secrets. Charlotte Canning painted delicate watercolors while the carnage of the Great Mutiny raged. Edith Lytton feared the moral laxity and adultery of India but indulged her husband rather than restraining him. Mary Curzon, an insecure American heiress in thrall to her husband unwittingly was almost crushed by him.Marian Fowler, “both scholarly and tart,” recounts their adventures in this classic work of colonial and women’s history.

The Churchills: In Love and War


Mary S. Lovell - 2011
    Lovell brilliantly recounts the triumphant political and military campaigns, domestic tragedies, happy marriages, and disastrous unions throughout generations of Churchills.The first Duke of Marlborough (1650–1722) was a soldier of such genius that a lavish palace, Blenheim, was built to honor his triumphs. Succeeding generations of Churchills sometimes achieved distinction but also included profligates and womanizers and were saddled with the ruinous upkeep of Blenheim. The Churchills were an extraordinary family, and they were connected with everyone who mattered in Britain. Winston Churchill—voted "the Greatest Briton" in a nationwide poll—dominates them all.

A Humble Companion


Laurie Graham - 2012
    In 1788, at the age of twelve, she's proposed as a suitably humble companion to Princess Sophia, one of George III's enormous brood of children. Nellie and Sofy become friends for life. From the first rumblings of revolution in France to the exciting, modern times of gas light and steam trains, from poor mad George to safe and steady Victoria, Nellie is the sharp-penned narrator of a changing world and the unchanging, cloistered lives of Princess Sofy and her sisters. Nellie proves to be more a hawk-eyed witness than a Humble Companion, as her memoir lifts the lid on the House of Hanover's secrets and lies.

The Making of the British Army


Allan Mallinson - 2009
    From the Army's birth at the battle of Edgehill in 1642 to our current conflict in Afghanistan, this is history at its most relevant -- and most dramatic.

I, Hogarth


Michael Dean - 2012
    Through Hogarth's lifelong marriage to Jane Thornhill, his inability to have children, his time as one of England's best portrait painters, his old age and unfortunate dip into politics, and his untimely death, I, Hogarth is the remarkable story told through the artist's eyes. Michael Dean blends Hogarth's life and work into a rich and satisfying narrative, recommended for fans of Hilary Mantel and Peter Ackroyd.

Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750 - 1850


Maya Jasanoff - 2005
    Jasanoff delves beneath the grand narratives of power, exploitation, and resistance to look at the British Empire through the eyes of the people caught up in it.Written and researched on four continents, Edge of Empire enters a world where people lived, loved, mingled, and identified with one another in ways richer and more complex than previous accounts have led us to believe were possible. And as this book demonstrates, traces of that world remain tangible—and topical—today. An innovative, persuasive, and provocative work of history.

The Forest


Edward Rutherfurd - 2000
    Now, Edward Rutherfurd, weaves its history and legends into compelling fiction. From the mysterious killing of King William Rufus, treachery and witchcraft, smuggling and poaching run through this epic tale of well-born ladies, lowly woodsmen, sailors, merchants and Cistercian monks. The feuds, wars, loyalties and passions of generations reach their climax in a crime that shatters the decorous society of Jane Austen's Bath, and whose ramifications continue through the age of the Victorian railway builders to the ecologists of the present day.

Civilisation


Kenneth Clark - 1969
    Art

London: The Information Capital


James Cheshire - 2014
    By combining millions of data points with stunning design, they investigate how flights stack over Heathrow, who lives longest, and where Londoners love to tweet. The result? One hundred portraits of an old city in a very new way.

Railways and The Raj: How the Age of Steam Transformed India


Christian Wolmar - 2017
    He is their wisest, most detailed historian' Observer India joined the railway age late: the first line was not completed until 1853 but, by 1929, 41,000 miles of track served the country. However, the creation of this vast network was not intended to modernize India for the sake of its people but rather was a means for the colonial power to govern the huge country under its control, serving its British economic and military interests. Despite the dubious intentions behind the construction of the network, the Indian people quickly took to the railways, as the trains allowed them to travel easily for the first time. The Indian Railways network remains one of the largest in the world, serving over 25 million passengers each day.In this expertly told history, Christian Wolmar reveals the full story of India's railways, from its very beginnings to the present day, and examines the chequered role they have played in Indian history and the creation of today's modern state.

लक्ष्यवेध


रणजित देसाई
    Apart from this, many a times each state of each nation has role models from the past but not forgotten history. Maharashtra has its own idols. The greatest and most loved of them all is shivaji maharaj.

The really useful guide to Kings and Queens of England


Sarah Kilby - 2010
    

European Architecture 1750-1890


Barry Bergdoll - 2000
    Never before had the functional requirements and expressive capacities of architecture been tested so thoroughly and with such diversity of invention. Bergdoll traces this experimentation in a broad range of contexts, focusing in particular on the relation of architectural design to new theories of history, new categories of scientific inquiry, and the broadening audience for architecture in this period of transformation. Unlike traditional surveys with long lists of buildings and architects, the themes are elucidated by in-depth coverage of key buildings which in turn are situated in both their local and European context.

Sharpe's Tiger


Bernard Cornwell - 1997
    Sharpe’s Tiger describes the adventures of the raw young private soldier Richard Sharpe in India, before the Peninsular War.Sharpe and the rest of his battalion, along with the rising star of the general staff Arthur Wellesley, are about to embark upon the siege of Seringapatam, island citadel of the Tippoo of Mysore. The British must remove this potentate from his tiger throne, but he has gone to extraordinary lengths to defend his city from attack. And always he is surrounded by tigers, both living and ornamental…any prisoner of the Tippoo can expect a savage end.When a senior British officer is captured by the Tippoo's forces Sharpe is offered a chance to attempt a rescue, a chance he snatched in order to escape from the tyrannical Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill. But in fleeing Hakeswill he enters the confusing, exotic and dangerous world of the Tippoo and Sharpe will need all his wits just to stay alive, let alone save the British army from catastrophe.With the same meticulous research and attention to detail that distinguishes the rest of the bestselling series of Sharpe novels, Bernard Cornwell has recreated the 1799 campaign against Seringapatam which made the British masters of southern India, a campaign that pitted brutalized soldiers against an ancient and splendid civilization. Set against a background of dazzling wealth, ruinous poverty, gorgeous palaces, sudden cruelty and pitiless battles, Sharpe’s Tiger is his greatest adventure yet.

The Adventures of a Cello


Carlos Prieto - 1998
    This work recounts the adventurous life of his beloved 'Cello Prieto, ' tracing its history through each of its previous owners from Stradivari in 1720 to the author himself