From the first British Viceroy whom he encountered Gandhi received a decoration; the last, ten years ago, sat beside his funeral pyre. During the stormy intervening period he came into contact, and often into conflict, with six others; Francis Watson describes how each relationship marked a different stage in the long historical process that culminated in 1947.
Francis Watson describes the long and adventurous history of the Koh-i-Noor; between the fourteenth century, when its existence first became known, and 1839, when, at Queen Victoria’s request, it joined the British Crown Jewels.
Francis Watson delights in Defoe's inimitable personage not only as the hero of one of the greatest of all adventure stories, but “as the portrait of an Englishman, a representative of the contemporary middle class, with a Protestant stimulus to hard work, founding a new age of commercial, industrial and political development.”
What happened in those final days as the king's life moved ‘peacefully towards its close?’
Francis Watson looks at British travellers in Italy throughout the ages.
