Mihir Bose's Blog, page 17

Mihir to give 75th Anniversary lecture on Subhas Chandra Bose

Mihir is giving the Sisir Kumar Bose Lecture 2018 entitled Subhas Chandra Bose, World War II, and a thrilling saga of espionage on Sunday 21st January at the Netaji Research Bureau in Kolkata.  This marks the 75th anniversary of Subhas Chandra Bose’s dramatic escape from India on 16 January 1941. He will draw on material […]

Fascinating review of Mihir’s book Silver by reviewer who knew him

Here is a wonderful review of Mihir’s book Silver, the Spy who Fooled the Nazis by Krishna Basu in ABP Sunday Magazine. Basu knew Silver well and sheds yet more light on this mysterious figure. You can read the article in it’s English translation by my good friend Sukalpa Pulak Gupta, BBC Bangla World Service.

Mihir speaks up for Indian women’s cricket

Mihir was one of the speakers at The Indian Forum on British Media’s event on 18th October at the House of Commons:  Indian Women’s Cricket–Past/Present/Future hosted by Mr. Virendra Sharma, MP. See his contribution to Indian women’s cricket – past/present/future             

Researching great Indian cricketers

Mihir has just returned from a literary festival in India. While there he took the opportunity to do some research for his next book on Indian cricket.  He travelled to Najafgarh, just outside Delhi to meet Amar Nath Sharma, Virender Sehwag’s coach. These are pictures taken at his coaching centre where Sehwag learnt the game.

Researching great Indian cricketeers

Mihir has just returned from a literary festival in India. While there he took the opportunity to do some research for his next book on Indian cricket.  He travelled to Najafgarh, just outside Delhi to meet Amar Nath Sharma, Virender Sehwag’s coach. These are pictures taken at his coaching centre where Sehwag learnt the game.

An unlikely Prince of Spies

Times Literary Supplement

Navtej Sarna

Spies, by definition, live in a world of grey, but the life of Bhagat Ram Talwar, alias Silver, seems to have been exceptionally shadowy. Born a Hindu Pathan in the North-West Frontier Province of undivided India, of nondescript appearance, armed with broken English but with a limitless talent for deception, Silver ranks with Garbo (Allies), Sorge (Soviet Union) and Cicero (Nazi Germany) in the pantheon of the great spies of the Second World War.

The ins and outs of cricketer Steven Finn’s life

The Hampstead home of the England bowler is where he relaxes to focus on future glory

At Home with the FT Steven Finn

Steven Finn, the Middlesex and England fast bowler, has had the sort of rollercoaster career that would have tempted many cricketers to give up in despair. He always seems to be on the brink of becoming England’s number one fast bowler, then has a slump in form or injury and is fighting to regain his place. In 2010, he took 5 for 87 during his first Test at Lord’s and was compared to Glen McGrath, the great Australian bowler.

India has changed beyond recognition

and so have fortunes of its expats here

70 years after independence, the India I know is losing its way

As the country celebrates 70 years of independence, it seems to be turning its back on the secular, tolerant society I remember growing up in Mumbai.


In 1960, 13 years after India won freedom, the American writer Selig Harrison published India: The Most Dangerous Decades. He feared “the collapse of the Indian state into regional components” ruled by communists. Predicting that India would never be able to match China, he wrote: “The west confronts the unmistakable fact of a dominant central authority in China, it is possible that in an unstable India no outsider will be able to say with assurance where political legitimacy resides.”

A ‘Midnight’s Child’ reflects

Salman Rushdie coined the phrase ‘Midnight’s Children’ in his Booker Prize-winning novel of the same name to describe those born as India regained its freedom.

Unlike his hero, Saleem Sinai, I was not born at the precise midnight hour. But I am part of the midnight generation, as I was seven months and three days old when the British left India, the first generation of free Indians for 200 years. I realised what a privilege this was when I had the good fortune to have coffee with Nelson Mandela at his home in Soweto, shortly after he walked free from 27 years of incarceration.