history, british india, colonial

Tough going. Not a book you can read right through. I found I was only able to read short bits at a time, so I read the book slowly over a few months. I did find it worth it though. I am very interested in the subject and era it described, and it is fascinating. ( )

This is the first book of a trilogy based on the personal and recorded accounts of residents of the British Empire between the world wars and the closing stages of British rule. This book is on India, the sequel on Africa is Tales from the Dark Continent, and the third on the magical lands of the ”Far East” is Tales from the South China Seas. These books are edited extracts from the British Broadcasting Company Radio archives. Charles Allen, the ‘oral historian’ for the series was himself born (1940) in India to a family of six generations who served in the British Raj.

Each of the chapters (of all the books in the series) are edited narrations from BBC radio 4 interviews with the actual raconteurs. Many of them, if not most, are now gone of course, so these works form their last true oral history.

Despite our rather jaundiced modern view of imperialism these fascinating accounts show some of the very positive benefits of realistically benevolent government. These voices from an imperial past offer insights into the motivation of the British Raj in India, including a sense of giving service, great courage and leadership and of personal sacrifices. But they also reveal the class-ridden lifestyle of relative luxury that was perhaps at the core of the eventual resentment and strengthening of the Indian emotional need for independence.

How the British lived in the time of the Raj ( )

Many - possibly all the participants in Charles Allen's oral history will now be dead, and yet their voices come through clearly, full of reminiscence of a bygone age. This is a very readable and compelling book and quite poignant as it recreates life during a time which has often been romanticised. The truth of course is quite different, and athough there were privileges there were also hardships, and life was not always easy. There was also a terrible snobbery, and the conventions and traditions of various sections of society were petty and suffocating.