India
Reading Norman Davies’s global history is like wading through porridge
For many of us, life has become global. Areas which were previously tranquil backwaters are now hives of international activity.…
The listening project
As Classic FM celebrated its quarter-century on Wednesday with not a recording but a live broadcast of a concert from…
Passage from India
It is not fashionable to feel sympathy for the men and women who lived and served in the British colonies…
Change and decay
Writing of his grandmother’s cremation, Kushanava Choudhury reflects in The Epic City that, while his expatriate Indian cousins are separated…
India in a day
Bold programming by the powers-that-be at Radio 4 meant it was possible to listen to all seven episodes of Ayeesha…
Separation anxiety
As Europe remembers Passchendaele, India and Pakistan recall Partition, just 70 years ago, when Britain so hastily abandoned its Indian…
Taking the Kamasutra seriously
The rough English translation of Kamasutra is pleasure (kama) treatise (sutra). In the West, since it was first (rather surreptitiously)…
The 90th birthday present that the Queen really wants
The Queen’s 90th birthday celebrations start this week with the real thing and barely stop until her official birthday in…
How trauma is passed down through the generations in our DNA
Sue Armstrong’s programme on Radio 4 All in the Womb (produced by Ruth Evans) should be required listening for anyone…
The Cauliflower®: Nicola Barker’s divine comedy
Nicola Barker is both prodigiously talented and admirably fearless. I have loved her books. But for some time I had…
Reasons to be cheerful about cricket, football and the Grand National
Well the sun is out, the sky is blue, and poor Boris Johnson is taking such a pounding from Matthew…
A devastating critique of the Indian justice system: Court reviewed
The big hitter this week is, of course, Batman v Superman, but if you want to learn something new, and…
I felt the earth move just as before: Akram Khan’s Kaash reviewed
You revisit an old love with wariness. Time’s passed for both of you — sharp edges have been smoothed, and…
Flying from Donald Trump to the beautiful ruins of another empire
Just as the presidential race in America started to get really crazy, I left for India. On the morning of…
Next time I go to India, I want imperialism 2.0
When in India, I always appal my highly educated tour guides. They despair of me, as they drag me round…
A non-dom speaks: ‘The Swiss, Hong Kong, the Singaporeans, they are all saying “Come”!’
Indian magnate Nirmal Sethia on what the English get wrong about tea – and the other countries seeking to recruit our discontented non-doms
Portrait of the week
Home Tom Hayes, aged 35, a former City trader who rigged the Libor rates daily for nearly four years while…
The story of Sikkim’s last king and queen reads like a fairy tale gone wrong
Sikkim was a Himalayan kingdom a third of the size of Wales squeezed between China, India, Nepal and Bhutan. I…
How British universities spread misery around the world
From Greece to Kenya, the worst economic ideas come from alumni of British universities
The forgotten army: abandoned by the British to the horrors of Partition
It is often said that cricket was ‘a game invented by the English and played by Indians’, and every so…
The dark side of Delhi
When Sara discovers that her husband died in India, rather than being killed in Afghanistan as she was told, she…
Letter from Kathmandu: China's beating India in the aid wars
After the first earthquake we were told that the chance of another one was 200 to 1. A fortnight later,…
The history of India in 50 personalities
The idea of using objects — salt, cod, nutmeg, silk — to turn history lessons into something popular and accessible…
Posh, educated and energetic: meet the servants of the super-rich
There is a huge industry catering to London’s foreign plutocracy
What happened to the children who survived the Holocaust?
‘I call Zelma Cacik who may be living in London,’ says the announcer, in the clipped RP accent of the…
