The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj - Rilegato

Gilmour, David

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0719555345 ISBN 13: 9780719555343

Casa editrice: John Murray Publishers Ltd, 2005

Riassunto

For nearly 200 years a small group of British officials administered vast areas of south Asia. In 1900 just over a thousand civil servants ruled a population of nearly 300 million people spread over a territory now covered by India, Pakistan, Burma and Bangladesh. This absorbing book traces their lives from recruitment to retirement, from a jungle to Government House, from a bungalow in Burma to a Residency in Rajputana. It describes their work and their leisure, their intellectual and their private lives, explaining their reasons for going to India and what they did when they got there. The result is a portrait more varied and complicated than that painted by their old admirers, and yet fairer and subtler than those routinely produced by postcolonial detractors.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

'An impeccably researched and written biography' (Sunday Telegraph on CURZON)

'Masterly and fascinating ... Gilmour has the happy knack of being able to combine the precision of an academic ... with the narrative historian's eye for human anecdote' (The Sunday Times)

'Quite exceptional ... a joy to read ... an enthralling and exhaustively researched survey' (Literary Review)

'One of the best biographies of our time ... a book of outstanding excellence' (New Statesman on CURZON)

'A biography as definitive as such a work can ever be ... a splendid book' (Evening Standard on CURZON)

'Full and satisfying ... everything is here, in what will replace Philip Mason's The Men Who Ruled India as the definitive book' (New Statesman)

'An excellent book ... authoritative and scholarly ... yet overflowing with excellent jokes and vignettes of eccentricity'-- Max Hastings (Sunday Telegraph)

'A magnificent work ... entirely convincing in its evocation of Curzon's extraordinary character. It is, in short, the definitive life' (Observer on CURZON)

'An absorbing, witty and intelligent biography ... David Gilmour's mix of erudition, hard analysis and quizzical amusement will give this volume a unique place on the ever more crowded shelves of political biography' (Independent on Sunday on CURZON)

'A detailed and balanced account, in which scholarship and good sense provide a counterbalance to transatlantic posturing ... lucid, witty and extremely well-written' (Daily Telegraph)

L'autore:

David Gilmour has written highly acclaimed works of contemporary history on Spain and the Middle East and, more recently award-winning biographies of Guiseppe Di Lampedusa and Lord Curzon.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: John Murray Publishers Ltd
• Data di pubblicazione: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0719555345
• ISBN 13: 9780719555343
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero edizione: 1
• Numero di pagine: 416