Anita Anand

In 1876 Sophia Duleep Singh was born into royalty. Her father, Maharajah Duleep Singh, was heir to the Kingdom of the Sikhs, a realm that stretched from the Kashmir Valley to the Khyber Pass and included the mighty cities of Lahore and Peshawar. It was a territory irresistible to the British, who plundered everything, including the fabled Koh-I-Noor diamond.

Exiled to England, the dispossessed Maharajah transformed his estate at Elveden in Suffolk into a Moghul palace. Sophia, god-daughter of Queen Victoria, was raised a genteel aristocratic Englishwoman. But when, in secret defiance of the British government, she travelled to India, she returned a revolutionary and devoted herself to battling injustice and inequality.

Meticulously researched and passionately written, this enthralling story of the rise of women and the fall of empire introduces an extraordinary individual and her part in the defining moments of recent British and Indian history.