Mihir Bose's Blog, page 15

Book review: The Patient Assassin: A crime thriller-cum-historical study by Anita Anand

Irish Times Anita Anand combines interesting details with forensic research and an eye for colour.  This is both a crime thriller and a historical study of what proved a crucial turning point in the British rule of India. The crime thriller ended with an assassination by an Indian, Udham Singh, of a top British Raj […]

Amritsar, 100 years on, remains an atrocity Britain cannot be allowed to forget

The Guardian Hundreds of civilians were massacred by a British general who was later treated as a hero. There has still been no apology.  Tomorrow marks the centenary of a British general gunning down unarmed Indians who had gathered peacefully in a park in Amritsar. In India you only have to mention the name of […]

BREXIT: The British like to have their cake and eat it

Asian Lite News Viewpoint by Mihir Bose A hard Brexit would go against the grain of British history for the British hate saying a final goodbye. The fact is they always want to have their cake and eat it. Boris doesn’t know how the British handles the negotiations. They are ramrod straight-talking people who set […]

‘Moeen’ shortlisted for Cricket Society and MCC Book of the Year Award

Mihir has been shortlisted for Moeen Ali and Mihir Bose’s Moeen published last September by Allen and Unwin. The result will be announced on Tuesday 16 April.

Second time around: a classic revisited in the British Journalism Review

Hugh McIlvanney on Football Mainstream Publishing  Edinburgh, 1994  British Journalism Review Scott Fitzgerald famously rebuked Ring Lardner for spending too much of his youth next to the baseball diamond writing about America’s summer sport. This was Fitzgerald self-importantly taking the chair of high art to look down on parvenus who write about games, not that […]

William the statue

Letter to The Times Sir, I could not agree more with David Aaronovitch’s suggestion of a statue for Richmal Crompton, the author of the William books (Comment, Feb 14, and letters, Feb 15). When I was a ten-year-old boy growing up in Mumbai, my grandfather presented me with a copy of Just William and I […]

The Corner Table Podcast: Lion and Lamb: Britain’s Moral Duality

Listen to Mihir talking about his latest book Lion and Lamb: Britain’s Moral Duality. Mihir arrived in the UK in 1969 with the equivalent of more than £12,500 smuggled in his underwear. Enoch Powell had delivered his infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech only a year before. This set a precedent for Mihir’s earliest impressions of […]

Book review – Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World 1914-1948

Irish Times Ramachandra Guha unearths fascinating nuggets about India’s complex hero On hearing of Gandhi’s death in January 1948, Noel Coward wrote, “Gandhi has been assassinated. In my humble opinion a bloody good thing but far too late.” But while British administrators did not go that far, many described him as a “humbug” and Orwell […]

Iron demons to break British mettle

History Today The creation of India’s fantastic rail network was the work of the British Raj, but it came at a high price for Indians themselves. Book review of Railways and the Raj: How the Age of Steam Transformed India by Christian Wolmar   Nobody who has visited India can fail to marvel at the […]

India’s ‘forgotten’ heroes and the Great War – letter to The Times

Sir, Further to your report “War diaries help India’s forgotten heroes take their place in history” (Nov 8), India’s massive contribution to the First World War is subject to two myths. The British myth, repeated by the prime minister this week, was that the war was a fight for democracy. It was not for the […]