I attended a book signing event on the 13th November 2007 in Brighton were the author talked about the complexities of writing such an epic in which she looked at the dynamics that bought about the fall of an Empire and the most unlikely love story ever not to be reported by the press, that of Edwina Mountbatten and Nehru, India's first Prime Minister.
The book is surprisingly good, I have to confess I didn't have high hopes when I purchased it but the subject is of such interest to me I was willing to take a chance and buy it and I am glad I did.
Ms Von Tunzleman has a written a book that has obviously been researched extensively, both here in the UK and also in India and her candid no nonsense approach to all the subjects she touches, such as Hindu and Muslim hostilities, Mahatma Gandhi's strange predilections that made people both love and hate him, to the fate of the dispossessed, the love story between Nehru and Edwina makes it very interesting to read to the point that you can't put it down.
For a historian Ms Von Tunzleman has made this book very accessible to the ordinary reader, she goes into great detail but she is never boring as she explains how India became a British Empire and how when it finally crumbled into dust, it did so, so swiftly that no one, least of all the British were prepared for the backlash that was to follow.
A superb book with many photos of an era that depicts two nations in transition, India the Jewel in the Crown striking out on its own and Great Britain, suddenly realising that its days as the greatest Empire in the world have come to an end, not so much a tragedy as the inevitability of change in a world flinging of the chains of colonial paternalism.