Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary

Product Information

Her involvement with the Indian independence movement was limited by her life in England, but she still knew and supported prominent pre-war campaigners for political reform. The accounts of her visits to India give really interesting insight into colonial India. She never lived there, although one of her older sisters settled in Lahore. Throughout her life Sophia’s relationships with her five siblings were deeply important to her, something conveyed very well in this biography. She also loved animals and bred dogs, with a particular fondness for pomeranians. I appreciated the unconventional lives of all three sisters: Sophia never married, Catherine settled in Germany with a female life partner, and Bamba attempted to become a doctor in American before moving to India. The British colonial authorities were so concerned about the destabilising effect the family’s influence could have on the Punjab that for decades they were forbidden from going to India at all. When they did, their activities were closely (and clumsily) monitored by the colonial authorities. During WWI Sophia became a volunteer nurse and fundraiser for Indian troops; during WWII she sheltered evacuees. Delightfully, Anand was able to speak to the evacuees themselves for this book. The detail that Sophia made a little girl promise to always use her vote is very moving. We learned about the Suffrage movement at school, and also some of the prominent figures that spearheaded the movement and pushed for progress for the advancement of women and their rights, specifically the right to vote.

The royal office refused Duleep’s re-entry into India, fearful that his presence might spark an insurrection. Feeling trapped, he turned his attention to fashioning his British countryside home into a Moghul palace. Sophia grew up with leopards prowling in pens below her bedroom window and Indian hunting hawks falling from the sky due to the cold. Duleep eventually died alone in Paris. From the debris of her father’s dynasty, Princess Sophia channelled her fury into becoming patron saint of the underdog This is Anand’s mission, as she sees it: To serve as a record-keeper and record-corrector. It’s a role she plays in her two other books, The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge and the Raj (2019; released to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar), and Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond (2017; co-authored with Dalrymple); and in her fourth, an upcoming work on Olive Christian Malvery (1871-1914), known as the world’s first woman undercover journalist. “She was also of Indian origin. She exposed the terrible practices in work offices, factories, markets and anywhere women were employed and exploited. She was brave, intrepid and everything I like in a character,” Anand says. The book is filled with the prominent figures of late 19th and early 20th century Britain. Sophia's brother Victor was a close friend of Lord Carnarvon (who sponsored the discovery of King Tutankhamun's tomb) and Sophia herself worked closely with the suffragette leader Emmaline Pankhurst. Sophia's social circle also included suffragettes who are little known today but were influential in their times. This is an exceptional book highlighting parts of British social, political and economic history through the life of Sophia Duleep Singh.Anand’s skill is to bring to life a character whose name does not figure in the annals of the suffragette movement. “Despite her best and repeated efforts, Sophia never managed to be sent to prison, and therefore was denied her chance to go on hunger strike and her place in the pantheon,” she writes. In the strangest twist of all, she concludes: “Not even when she threw herself at the prime minister’s car would the police and courts punish her as they punished others of lower rank.” Such were the intolerable burdens of class. In July 2011 Anand left the Daily Politics to present a new show called Double Take on Radio 5 Live on Sunday mornings. [7] In June 2012, Anand took over from Jonathan Dimbleby as the presenter of Radio 4's Any Answers? Saturday current affairs phone-in programme between 2:00 and 2:45pm. [8] Jonathan Dimbleby hands Any Answers? baton to Anita Anand on Radio 4". BBC Media Centre. 23 May 2012 . Retrieved 11 August 2012. Biographies – Anita Anand: Presenter, Radio 5 Live and The Daily Politics". BBC Press Office. Archived from the original on 11 December 2010 . Retrieved 6 November 2016. Anand has presented the BBC Radio 4 show Midweek, and on television she has been a presenter on the Heaven and Earth Show. She has co-presented the Daily Politics on BBC Two with Andrew Neil from September 2008, with a break for maternity leave from January to September 2010.

From Never Have I Ever and Ms Marvel to Wedding Season, there’s been an exciting shift. The world’s first brown female superhero and stories that centre Indian characters are hugely important steps for South Asian kids the world over to feel seen and to know that the opportunities afforded their white counterparts are within their reach too. As Marian Wright Edelman said, “you can’t be what you can’t see”. Even if some of these shows are for audiences that the navigation system would flag as “American”, I feel hopeful that the waves will lap the industry here too. Let’s pole-vault our way into the reality we’re hungry for: game-changing South Asian women at the fore and cue the lights up on the incredible Princess Sophia Duleep Singh.The part of the book I found the most touching was a memory of the daughter of the elderly Princess' housekeeper. Anand married science writer Simon Singh in 2007. The couple have two sons and live in Richmond, London. [17] [18]