I am becoming an unashamed Ben Macintyre groupie, having just devoured yet another of his smashing books in record time. “The Spy & the Traitor” is the truly extraordinary account of the life and career of Oleg Gordievsky, head of the KGB’s London station in the 1980s, and a British …
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 …
The third in the delightful Parveen Mistry series takes us into the heart of early 1920s Bombay, as the emerging Indian independence movement sees protests and riots over the visit of the Prince of Wales and the future colonial ruler. It is an inspired choice by Ms Massey to make …
This enthralling book made perfect lockdown reading. Any personal, self-indulgent tendency to wallow in despair at the Coronavirus crisis swamping the world, could be put into some sort of context while reading this book. When the entire world was at war, when Hitler’s troops were planning a mass invasion of …
I have come very late to the Mark Forsyth Fan Club, but I am already a fully-paid up member. Mr. Forsyth showed us just how formidably clever and witty he is in The Etymologican – my first review of 2020, incidentally. “The Etymologican” is all about words and is an …
What a joy this biography is. An absolute delight to read and oh-so interesting to learn about a fascinating historical figure, about whom I was – admission time – hitherto woefully ignorant. The life of Farzana, known as Begum Samru, is a classic rags-to-riches story, told with verve and much …
A second reading of this book was most definitely called for, after seeing the trailer for the film of the same name. (The film is yet to be seen, though I’m saddened by the lukewarm reviews it got). I’d read the book almost immediately after it was published in 2008 …
Reading Abir Mukherjee’s “A Necessary Evil” was a fine balancing act between dying to know what happened next, and dreading the approaching end of the book. This absolute cracker of a novel is a fine and worthy successor to Mr. Mukherjee’s first novel “A Rising Man“, and it is with …
What a pleasure to re-read a book after some 8 years and find it every bit as entertaining. My Delhi book club was bang on trend when we read this book in late 2008, and I thoroughly enjoyed it at the time. We all did, I seem to remember. In the …
