Tag Archives: History

In My Hands Today…

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The Viceroy’s Daughters: The Lives of the Curzon Sisters – Anne de Courcy

For many years Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India (1898-1905), controlled all aspects of his daughters’ lives. Irene, born in 1896, Cynthia, born in 1898, and Alexandra, born in 1905, eventually revolted against their father’s control.

Irene had many affairs but never married. Cynthia married the up-and-coming Oswald Mosely, and Alexandra married the Prince of Wales’ best friend, Fruity Metcalfe. Throughout the 1920s, the sisters were at the centre of a fast and glittering world.

This biography provides insight into their lives, public and private, and gives a different view of German, Italian and British fascism. Based on unpublished letters and diaries, this book provides new revelations about Oswald Mosely, the Cliveden set, Lord Halifax, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

In My Hands Today…

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The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War – Tim Butcher

On a summer morning in Sarajevo a hundred years ago, a teenage assassin named Gavrilo Princip fired not just the opening shots of the First World War but the starting gun for modern history, when he killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Yet the events Princip triggered were so monumental that his own story has been largely overlooked, his role garbled and motivations misrepresented.

The Trigger puts this right, filling out as never before a figure who changed our world and whose legacy still has an impact on all of us today. Born a penniless backwoodsman, Princip’s life changed when he trekked through Bosnia and Serbia to attend school. As he ventured across fault lines of faith, nationalism and empire, so tightly clustered in the Balkans, radicalisation slowly transformed him from a frail farm boy into history’s most influential assassin.

By retracing Princip’s journey from his highland birthplace, through the mythical valleys of Bosnia to the fortress city of Belgrade and ultimately Sarajevo, Tim Butcher illuminates our understanding both of Princip and the places that shaped him. Tim uncovers details about Princip that have eluded historians for a century and draws on his own experience, as a war reporter in the Balkans in the 1990s, to face down ghosts of conflicts past and present.

In My Hands Today…

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The Final Curtsey – Margaret Rhodes

This is the intimate and revealing autobiography of Margaret Rhodes, the first cousin of Queen Elizabeth II and the niece of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.

Margaret Rhodes was born into the Scottish aristocracy, into a now almost vanished world of privilege. Royalty often came to stay and her house was run in the style of Downton Abbey. Her aunt was Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and Queen Elizabeth is her first cousin.

In the Second World War years, she ‘lodged’ at Buckingham Palace while she worked for MI5. She was a bridesmaid at the wedding of her cousin Princess Elizabeth to Prince Philip. Three years later the King and Queen attended her own wedding; Princess Margaret was a bridesmaid. In 1990, she was appointed as a Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen Mother, acting also as her companion, which she describes in touching detail.

In the early months of 2002, she spent as much time as possible with her frail and ailing aunt, and was at her bedside when she died at Easter that year. This is a fascinating account of a special life, with the author’s family relationships to nobility and royalty, her long and special marriage, her children and grandchildren and a life lived to the full.

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The Lost River: On The Trail of the Sarasvati – Michel Danino

The Lost River explores the geography, history, and mythology, of the Sarasvati river, drawing from various sources like folklore, the Vedas, archaeology, local practices, history, geology, and meteorology. The book explains that the river, its very existence, and its course have been discussed and speculated over for years. The magnificence of the Sarasvati has been detailed in scriptures like the Rig Veda. Historians and archaeologists could not understand how it mysteriously ceased to exist. Some of the even deem the river a myth.

This book attempts the deduce facts from fable and makes a strong case for the existence of the river. It goes over the upheavals that the Indian subcontinent went through thousands of years ago, explaining the dry weather, erosion, and tectonic events that changed the terrain, altered river courses, and may have made the Sarasvati disappear. The book then chronicles explorations into the river started, which began around the early nineteenth century, when it was rediscovered by British officials doing topographic explorations.

The book also explains the culture around that time, shedding light on the Indus valley civilisation and the rich and flourishing culture of Harappa. The book goes on the show the results of explorations into the river’s origins and course using modern technology like satellite imagery and isotope analysis. The author has also used his proof of the existence of the river to bolster his theory that Aryans were indigenous to India and not foreign invaders.

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Daughters of the Sun: Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire – Ira Mukhoty

In 1526 a Timurid warrior-scholar rides into Delhi to build an empire. With him ride his wives, his sisters, his daughters, his aunts and his distant female relatives.

Unhindered by a relatively recent conversion to Islam, these women will help found a culture of such magnificence and beauty that it will become a by-word for opulence in the world. These Mughal women of Hindustan — unmarried daughters, eccentric sisters, fiery milk-mothers and beautiful wives, will contribute to the great syncretic culture of the Mughals by writing biographies, building monuments, engaging in diplomacy, and patronizing the arts.

And even as the zenana changes from the earlier nomadic, tented spaces to the later more sequestered grandeur within the high stone walls of mighty qilas, the influence of the women remains visible and unquestioned. This book looks at the lives of these Mughal women, and the enigma of their disappearance, except as objects of curiosity, from our collective memory.