Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. No notes or highlighting. Some light marking due to age. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> I first went to India in 1943 on military duty as a national serviceman. I knew nothing much about the country did not particularly wish to know more or to go there. I knew but did not like Kipling because as a boy I hated books about animals that talked. When a bit older I appreciated the qualities of some of the ‘Barrack-Room Ballads’. I knew there had been a well in a place called Cawnpore and something called a residency in Lucknow and that some English people had died there during the mutiny of 1857. I had read Macaulay on Clive and Macaulay on Hastings and in- stinctively preferred the latter to the former. I had an aunt whose husband had been an engineer in India but he was already dead and all that fas- cinated me about her was that she played the piano quite well and sang out- standingly badly. In my youth Mahatma Gandhi emerged as a name and a face in the newspapers and in a verse of a song sung by Miss Gracie Fields called ‘Granny’s Little Old Skin Rug’. In other words India for me was either a bit of a bore or good for a laugh. (LL)