The Ruling Caste

Beautifully written and endlessly diverting… Excellent – Denis Judd * Times Literary Supplement *A book that is not only informative, but also lucid, witty, and extremely well-written * Daily Telegraph *Based on stunningly exhaustive research in official archives and family papers, and written with tremendous wit, style and sense of pace, Gilmour’s book is a masterful account of British life in India. If you have ever wondered what it would have been like to run the Raj, The Ruling Caste has all the answers. – Dominic Sandbrook * Scotsman *Gilmour is the perfect companion to Victorian India - shrewd, funny, always a joy to read. He writes lean, elegant prose and wears his learning lightly… In David Gilmour, the British in India have at last found the historian they deserve. This is a marvellous book – Jane Ridley * Spectator *Masterly and fascinating * Sunday Times *Exceptional… A joy to read * Literary Review *Elegant and iconic – William Dalrymple * New Statesman, Christmas Books *Learned, thoughtful and beautifully written… it conveys brilliantly and vividly the strange quality of these individuals’ lives – Linda Colley * The Nation *Authoritative and scholarly * Sunday Telegraph *Evenhanded, carefully researched and elegantly written – Peter Parker * Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year *

David Gilmour’s books include award-winning biographies of Rudyard Kipling, Lord Curzon and the Italian writer, Giuseppe di Lampedusa. He is also the author of Cities of Spain and of several works on the politics of Spain and the Middle East. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a former Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford, he is a contributor to the New York Review of Books.

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