The fifth instalment in the excellent Perveen Mistry series sees our feisty, intelligent, eminently likeable heroine introduced to the world of films. Today, Bollywood is a widely recognised genre (& word), but back in 1922, films were a relatively new phenomenon, arousing some suspicion. It was a world that spoke …
I first read this book in 2004 when I solo-trekked to Everest Base Camp. I remember loving the book at the time, swept up as I was in the immensity of making it alone to EBC, never mind the mountain itself. I read everything I could lay my hands on …
Subtitle “British Women in India” To anyone who has read about the history of India, especially during the years when the Europeans travelled there, there is a misperception that women first started settling there from the 19th century onwards. There is a stereotyped image we have of the British memsahibs …
This fascinating biography of Elizabeth Hawley, a Kathmandu-based American woman, is an absolutely riveting read. Elizabeth Hawley was an avowed non-climber who was, nevertheless, the ultimate authority and arbiter on all things Himalayan climbing and mountaineering. For decades she interviewed climbers as they passed though Kathmandu, grilling them in detail …
I am a huge fan of Mick Conefrey’s books, all of which I have listened to as audio books, as I trot round the streets of New Delhi (where I live). I have trained for mountaineering expeditions (w-a-y more modest than the ones he writes about!) and for marathons, listening …
Before I share my thoughts on this amazing book, let me first tell you the delightful backstory to it. A woman with whom I am in contact on Twitter/X ,but have never met in person, sent it to me to celebrate her birthday month. Seriously! When the book arrived with …
There are some books that I re-read every few years, and always with undiminished pleasure. As it so happens, several of them are about India, some of them my ritual pre-monsoon, hot-weather reading. Kim. Heat and Dust. And, of course, “Chasing the Monsoon“, Alexander Frater’s marvellous travelogue about following the …
This book is a smashing follow-up to the wonderful “Midnight at Malabar House” which introduced us to the feisty Persis Wadia, India’s first female detective. “The Dying Day” is every bit as engaging and clever and if, by a strange oversight, you were not immediately a die-hard Persis fan after …
Disclosure time. Like the author, Mr. Harris, I, too, am a “firangi” (foreigner) married to an Indian, and based in Delhi. Like the author, Mr. Harris, I, too, am a runner – this piece of information will make sense anon. I haven’t met Mr. Harris, by the way, but we …
