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A fascinating, robust and provocative version of the sunset of the Raj Lawrence James, author of Raj: the Making and Unmaking of British India Walter Reid has written a thorough and hard-hitting account of the ways in which many British statesmen and administrators did their best to derail, or at least impede, India’s progress to independence… His research has been painst A fascinating, robust and provocative version of the sunset of the Raj Lawrence James, author of Raj: the Making and Unmaking of British India Walter Reid has written a thorough and hard-hitting account of the ways in which many British statesmen and administrators did their best to derail, or at least impede, India’s progress to independence… His research has been painstaking and comprehensive, and he has presented his case with clarity and sobriety. The book contains wonderfully telling pen portraits of many of the protagonists. - Dennis Judd, Emeritus Professor of Imperial and Commonwealth History at London Metropolitan University Instructive and convincing, Keeping the Jewel in the Crown deftly tracks Whitehall’s half-baked attempts to deflect the Indian demand for self-determination. One can only sympathise with those, British as well as Indian, who had to wrestle with the consequences. -John Keay, author of India: A History When India became independent in 1947, the general view, which has prevailed until now, is that Britain had been steadily working for an amicable transfer of power for decades. In this book, Walter Reid argues that nothing could be further from the truth. With reference to a vast amount of documentary material, from private letters to public records and state papers, he shows how Britain held back political progress in India for as long as possible—a policy which led to unimaginable chaos and suffering when independence was granted and which created a legacy of hatred and distrust that continues to this day.

A fascinating, robust and provocative version of the sunset of the Raj Lawrence James, author of Raj: the Making and Unmaking of British India Walter Reid has written a thorough and hard-hitting account of the ways in which many British statesmen and administrators did their best to derail, or at least impede, India’s progress to independence… His research has been painst A fascinating, robust and provocative version of the sunset of the Raj Lawrence James, author of Raj: the Making and Unmaking of British India Walter Reid has written a thorough and hard-hitting account of the ways in which many...  Read More