Plain Tales from the Raj

London : Century Publishers, Andre Deutsch and BBC, 1985. First hardcover edition by this publisher. Hardcover (Original Cloth). Good Condition. Slightly smaller than A4 landscape. Binding is tight, cover and spine fully intact Text body is clean and free from previous owner annotation, underlining and highlighting No foxing in this copy Edges all neat and clean Boards have some slight rubbing on front cover There is still great curiosity about the phenomenon of British imperialism and the very distinctive ruling society that it gave rise to in India. As far as the British are concerned, this curiosity is well founded, since it is a still largely unrecognised fact that the Indian connection has direct or indirect links with just about every family in Britain.

There are more than a million British graves in the Indian sub-continent, reaching back through three and a half centuries. Poke among the branches of any family tree - but particularly among the Scots and the Ulster Protestants - and you will find that Uncle Jack did five years hard with the Dorsets in Mhow and Secunderabad, that Great-Aunt Elfrida married a medical missionary from Chittagong or that granny's grandad was a Colonel in the Honourable East India Company's Bengal Army at the time of the Mutiny.

Now that the Raj is firmly established as part of our Indo-British heritage it can be savoured as such. As to the charge of revisionism I can only reiterate what has been said before: that Plain Tales from the Raj is not a defence of colonialism in action but simply an evocation, a mosaic put together entirely and only from the evidence of some of those who were there. B & W illustrations and photos and colour photos