A stunning and bloody history of nineteenth-century India and the reign of the Last Mughal by the bestselling author of White Mughals
WINNER OF THE DUFF COOPER MEMORIAL PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE
'Indispensable reading on both India and the Empire' Daily Telegraph
'Brims with life, colour and complexity ... outstanding' Evening Standard
On a dark evening in November 1862, a cheap coffin is buried in eerie silence. There are no lamentations or panegyrics, for the British Commissioner in charge has insisted, 'No vesting will remain to distinguish where the last of the Great Mughals rests.' This Mughal is Bahadur Shah Zafar II, one of the most tolerant and likeable of his remarkable dynasty who found himself leader of a violent and doomed uprising. The Siege of Delhi was the Raj's Stalingrad, the end of both Mughal power and a remarkable culture.
An
extraordinarily detailed and highly readable portrait of the last tragic months [of Mughal Delhi]. It is also a lament for a lost Islamic civilisation at its most tolerant and pluralistic . . . Dalrymple brings the Uprising alive from Indian and British perspectives . . . A
monumental work that breaks new ground in the study of one of the most important episodes in Indian history. Its lessons about the dangers of aggressive Western intrusion and interference in the East are as
pertinent today as they were 150 years ago
