The Last Mughal

£8.99

Dalrymple’s "The Last Mughal" tells the dramatic tale of India’s last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar II. Directly descended from Genghis Khan and Timur of Akbar and Shah Jahan, his Mughal ancestors had had control most of India, but Zafar, late to the throne, was king in name only.

That he was drained of power by the East India Company and in his mid-sixties when he ascended did not stop him leading a cultural renaissance from his beloved capital Delhi. He himself was talented, tolerant and likeable, a skilled calligrapher, a profound writer on Sufism, a creator of gardens, and a serious mystical poet - in a pursuit of the most perfect Urdu couplet while the British took more and more power.

In 1857 Zafar gave his blessing to a rebellion growing within the Company’s own troops which transformed into the largest uprising the British Empire ever faced - and neither power could retreat. Delhi became the blood-strewn battleground overnight.

Dalrymple finds new material, not previously translated, that include eyewitness statements, court records, and more to tell the story from the Indian perspective of this bloodiest of upheavals for the first time. The similarities with today’s uneasiness between West and East are all too clear.