David Gilmour is one of Britain's most admired and accomplished historical writers and biographers. He is the author of lives of George Curzon (Duff Cooper Prize) and Rudyard Kipling (Elizabeth Longford Prize) and of The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj, an acclaimed study of the administrators of Victorian India. His other works include The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, its Regions and their Peoples, The Last Leopard, a biography of Giuseppe di Lampedusa (Marsh Biography Award) as well as several books on the modern history of Spain and the Middle East. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a former Research Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford.

The British in India is an exceptional book. It evokes those animated crowd scenes painted by William Frith, full of people going about their workaday lives, or enjoying themselves. These paintings enchanted the Victorians, prompting them to ask: who are these people, where do they come from, what are they saying and thinking, and what will become of them? David Gilmour's canvas is British India and he provides the answers in a penetrating and vivid portrait of the British men and women who ran the show from the mid-18th century to 1947.

David Gilmour is one of Britain's most admired and accomplished historical writers and biographers. He is the author of lives of George Curzon (Duff Cooper Prize) and Rudyard Kipling (Elizabeth Longford Prize) and of The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj, an acclaimed study of the administrators of Victorian India. His other works include The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, its Regions and their Peoples, The Last Leopard, a biography of Giuseppe di Lampedusa (Marsh Biography Award) as well as several books on the modern history of Spain and the Middle East. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a former Research Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford.

The British in India is an exceptional book. It evokes those animated crowd scenes painted by William Frith, full of people going about their workaday lives, or enjoying themselves. These paintings enchanted the Victorians, prompting them to ask: who are these people, where do they come from, what are they saying and thinking, and what will become of them? David Gilmour's canvas is British India and he provides the answers in a penetrating and vivid portrait of the British men and women who ran the show from the mid-18th century to 1947.

David Gilmour is one of Britain's most admired and accomplished historical writers and biographers. He is the author of lives of George Curzon (Duff Cooper Prize) and Rudyard Kipling (Elizabeth Longford Prize) and of The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj, an acclaimed study of the administrators of Victorian India. His other works include The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, its Regions and their Peoples, The Last Leopard, a biography of Giuseppe di Lampedusa (Marsh Biography Award) as well as several books on the modern history of Spain and the Middle East. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a former Research Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford.

The British in India is an exceptional book. It evokes those animated crowd scenes painted by William Frith, full of people going about their workaday lives, or enjoying themselves. These paintings enchanted the Victorians, prompting them to ask: who are these people, where do they come from, what are they saying and thinking, and what will become of them? David Gilmour's canvas is British India and he provides the answers in a penetrating and vivid portrait of the British men and women who ran the show from the mid-18th century to 1947.