The Last Mughal – The Fall of a Dynasty

http://wp.me/pMXBe-4A

William Dalrymple’s latest book has won the Duff Cooper Prize for history. He writes well, and engagingly – a recommended read.

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Author: coldwaterjohn

CWJ travelled extensively with his family, having worked in eleven countries over thirty years. A keen photographer, holding a Private Pilot's Licence, he focuses mainly on landscape and aerial imagery. Having worked in the Middle East extensively he follows developments in that region with particular interest, and views with growing concern, the radicalisation flowing from Islamic fundamentalism, and the intolerance for opposing views, stemming from it.

7 thoughts on “The Last Mughal – The Fall of a Dynasty”

  5. Thanks for that link. Dalrymple writes clearly and well. I receive feedback on what is going on in Afghanistan from a friend who is an Advisor to a senior cabinet minister there…
    Noone seems to read history any more who involved ourselves there in our most recent foray into that benighted place.
    I was reading the history of our involvement in Afghanistan as a boy, partly as a result of Coldwaterjohn’s involvement there with the Seaforths in the 19th century. The text of the Regiment’s history is fascinating if you want detail of what it was like to be posted from pillar to post (http://www.qohldrs.co.uk/html/seaforth_highlanders_full_hist.htm).
    In more recent years, “Tournament of Shadows – The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Asia” by Karl Meyer and Shareen Brysac, was a good read, but hefty at 645 pages!

  6. Noone seems to read history any more who involved ourselves there in our most recent foray into that benighted place.

    No they don’t, and if they had I doubt we would have been there.
    Thank you for your link.

    How interesting to have such feedback, CWJ. Does your friend’s opinion agree with that of Dalrymple?
    It would be interesting to know.

  7. Dalrymple is spot on. Pakistan Intelligence’s role in Afghanistan makes me wonder what the Americans think they are doing tolerating Pakistani duplicity in the whole affair. Their most recent offer of another great chunk of aid, I suspect will be a quid pro quo to allow Drones to bomb the hell out of the NWFP, but apparently many of the main Taliban and al Qaeda leaders are now reported to be in safe houses in Karachi, which is far less likely to be bombed back to the stone age, for obvious reasons. The Great Game is not over…

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