![]() ![]() ![]() Progressively hemmed in by the British, deprived first of all remnants of power, then even of his title of emperor (the British called him “the King of Delhi”), and then ultimately even of control of his personal jewels, this indecisive old man found himself at the center of a terrible civil war. Few can be as well written as The Last Mughal, which focuses closely on the pathetic story of the last of the emperors of the dynasty of Babur and Akbar, Bahadur Shah II. There is no shortage of books on the Indian Mutiny, although I have to confess that I have not read very many of them. It’s a marvelous sensory experience, marred only by the one sound that we never do seem to hear: the ring of truth. We hear the plash of fountains in courtyards, the chant of Urdu poetry, the calls of street sellers we see the gaudy colors and smell the spices of the east. Dalrymple’s depiction of the city is unabashedly nostalgic. In The Last Mughal, William Dalrymple evokes a lost world: old Delhi before the Indian Mutiny and the ensuing destruction of much of the venerable capital of the Mughals. ![]()
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