India

Saturday

Juliet Townsend

Fleeing fog and filth

In a sense, as this interesting collection of his writings makes clear, Rudyard Kipling was always abroad. His first vivid memories were of an early childhood in Bombay, ‘light and colour and golden and purple fruits’ in the market with his ayah, or visits with his bearer to little Hindu temples where ‘I held his hand and looked at the dimly-seen, friendly Gods.’ His descriptive writing is always full of sounds and smells; in fact there is a whole lecture in this collection on ‘the illimitable, the fascinating subject of smells in their relation to the traveller’. Kipling’s first impressions of England were of a grey, dreary place. It was

Rowena Macdonald

Shady characters

A great deal of time in Neel Mukherjee’s A Life Apart and Max Schaefer’s Children of the Sun is spent in gents’ public toilets — cottaging being a key feature of both debuts — and yet such is the elegance and intelligence of their prose, the reader comes away feeling educated rather than soiled. A great deal of time in Neel Mukherjee’s A Life Apart and Max Schaefer’s Children of the Sun is spent in gents’ public toilets — cottaging being a key feature of both debuts — and yet such is the elegance and intelligence of their prose, the reader comes away feeling educated rather than soiled. A Life

Saturday

Jane Ridley

Elder, but no better

William Pitt the Elder, Earl of Chatham was hailed by Victorian schoolboys as the man who made England great. He was the patriot leader, the minister who steered the country through the Seven Years War, climaxing in the Year of Victories of 1759. General Wolfe heroically captured Quebec, British troops helped Frederick the Great of Prussia smash the French at the battle of Minden, and the British navy decisively defeated the French at Quiberon Bay. England emerged as the greatest power not just in Europe but in the world, and Pitt was the hero. In fact, Pitt’s reputation was wildly inflated. The war was fought by soldiers making decisions on

Wednesday

Daniel Korski

David Miliband’s big idea: an Af-Pak-India Council

An idea that has received little media attention in Britain, but is giving Foreign Office diplomats sleepless nights, is David Miliband’s push for a “regional stabilisation council” involving Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, to be unveiled at the international conference scheduled for January 28. The idea is seen as an innovate way to bring the three countries together, while at the same time allowing the Foreign Secretary, who will formally host the conference, to show leadership and initiative. The pretender to the post-election Labour throne needs something to get rid of his “Banana Boy” epithet. So far, however, the idea is not meeting with local support. Pakistan, in particular, is opposed

Sunday

Alex Massie

20 Years of the Little Master

The thing about cricket, or one of the things about it, is that the game makes few allowances for ability. The strong are persecuted just as surely as the weak are found out. There is, literally, no hiding place. Indeed, the strongest players may suffer more than the weakest. For with ability comes increased expectation and responsibility. The weak or average player can fail; the strong cannot if his team is to prosper. So not the least of the many wonders of Sachin Tendulkar is that he has withstood the all-but-intolerable burdens that come with being a hero to a billion people. Consider this: instead of the silence you might

Wednesday

Lewis Jones

Agony and ecstasy

Twenty years ago, when William Dalrymple published his first book, In Xanadu, travel writers tended to follow the example of Paul Theroux, whose huge success then dominated the genre, and to cast themselves as the heroes of their narratives. ‘With Nine Lives,’ explains Dalrymple in the introduction to his seventh book, ‘I have tried to invert this, and keep the narrator firmly in the shadows, so bringing the lives of the people I have met to the fore.’ The result is so exemplarily self-effacing — most of the words here are those of others — that it will disappoint some of his fans, who will miss the direct expression of

Wednesday

Daniel Korski

A new world order – don’t be silly

Go to any international think-tank conference and you will hear one complaint repeated ad nauseam: the intenational system, built after World War II – and incorporating the UN, NATO, the IMF, WHO etc. – is no longer fit for purpose. It needs to change to accomodate new threats, like climate change, and new powers like India and Brazil. The last point is particularly oft-heard. If India provides the majority of UN peacekeepers, should Delhi not have a permanent say on the UN Security Council? Now that China has become a pillar of the global economy, should the Beijing government not have more votes on the IMF board? The limited representation

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

Aung Sang Suu Kyi, a victim of the post-American world

Today the Burmese junta convicted pro-democracy campaigner Aung Sang Suu Kyi to a further 18 months under house arrest after a U.S. man swam uninvited to her lakeside home in May and stayed there for two days, breaching the terms of her house arrest. Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy have led the world’s outrage, urging the UN Security Council and European Union to impose tougher sanctions on the regime.   Unfortunately, not much is likely to happen to the Burmese generals. They remain protected not only by their neighbors, but by China and India who have both economic and strategic interests in keeping the regime intact. Like China, power-hungry India