Overview

A generation before the coming of `The Munshi' (Abdul Karim) onto the royal scene, Queen Victoria had become dangerously enraptured by a handsome teenage maharaja. Duleep Singh, a recent convert to Christianity, came to England as an exiled boy-king who had once ruled over a vast swathe of rich territories nestled between British India and Afghanistan. But he was forced to relinquish all - including the most expensive diamond the world had ever known - to Victoria's conquering Raj. Good-looking, a lover of hawks, hunting and women, and brimming with artistic and musical talent, Duleep soon secured a status as an exotic ornament in fashionable Victorian society. His fellow adventurer, the future King Edward VII, made frequent visits to his country estate in Suffolk, home to his growing family (a daughter, Sophia, would become a leading suffragette). And yet as firmly rooted in British society as he was, as a `native' he was not of it. Denied real acceptance and the hope of leaving an inheritance for his children, gambling and chorus girls were not enough to assuage the now middle-aged former emperor. In 1886 (the year before the Munshi's arrival) he decamped to Paris with a new love and a wild plan to reclaim his lost kingdom with the aid of Russian and Irish-American rebels. But nothing is what it seems in this extraordinary story, which takes the reader into a hidden and turbulent world of dynastic glamour and high-power politics of the British Empire.

Full Product Details

9781911271178

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

CHRISTY CAMPBELL is a prize-winning author, journalist and former defence correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph. He has broadcast for BBC Panorama, Radio 4 `Today', CNN, Channel 4 and BBC 4. He left front line journalism in 2000 to write a series of acclaimed investigative histories beginning with The Maharajah's Box, which garnered critical acclaim and established him as a specialist in forensic historical investigations.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available