Indian history
India radiates kindly light across the East
William Dalrymple describes how, from the 3rd century BC to 1200 AD, India illuminated the rest of Asia with its philosophies and artistic forms through unforced cultural conquest
Rejecting the Raj: Gandhi’s acolytes in the West
Madeleine Slade, born in 1892, was a typical upper-class Victorian daughter of empire: a childhood riding around her grand-father’s estate…
Bloodbath at Baisakhi: the centenary of the Amritsar massacre
On 10 April 1919, the peppery governor of the Punjab, Sir Michael O’Dwyer, ordered the immediate arrest of two leaders…
The Lion of the Punjab: the short, brutish career of John Nicholson
‘I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion’, said Winston Churchill as prime minister in 1942,…
Did the reprisals following the Indian mutiny seal Britain’s fate in the subcontinent?
Many and various are the things one finds in Kentish pubs (I’m told); but few could top the sepoy’s skull…
Britain didn’t fight the second world war — the British empire did
Had it not been for the empire, Britain might have lost the second world war, says William Dalrymple. The war certainly lost Britain the empire
