Very little is known about the Sepoy uprising of 1857 and the events leading to it and to the inglorious end of the reign of the last Mughal emperor, the infirm, Bahadur Shah Zafar and with him the 300 year Mughal rule. William Dalrymple's well researched tome transports us to the Delhi of that period and provides a blow-by-blow account.

'The Last Mughal - The Fall of A Dynasty, Delhi, 1857' a 486 page book, not including glossary, notes, bibliography and index and published by Bloomsbury is for those who want to know about the India about that period.

I have always been curious about the the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny and the last of the Mughals. All I knew about the mutiny was what remembered from history class in school, that the Hindu and Muslim Sepoys (soldiers) of the British East Company, offended because they had to bite the cartridges greased with cow and pig fat, mutinied against their masters thus leading to a widespread massacre and the taking over of India by the then British government with a proclamation by Queen Victoria.
Even less was taught in school about the last Mughal emperor.
I don't remember learning anything about him. All I remember of him is his songs immortalized by Mohammed Rafi in the 1960 film Lal Qila, Na Kisi Ki Aaankh Ka Noor Hoon and Lagta Nahin Hai Dil Mera Ujdae Dayaar Mein...

But in this excellent book William Dalrymple brings out Bahadur Shah Zafar from near anonymity and introduces him to us as a frail old man in his eighties, indecisive but sensitive, with the heart of a poet thrown against his will into the tumult that eventually swept the glorious reign of his forbears into the dust of the fading memories of the people of India.

It is sad that it takes a British national to write a definitive history about one of the most important periods of Indian history and that too from most of the material that are available in India itself to any serious historian or writer .

It is sadder still that 1887 is a period which is so poorly understood by the average Indian today inspite of Indian films and televison, which is bursting with world-class talent, has also failed to do justice to this period. The only film that came close to touching the subject (but was nowhere historically accurate) was the 2005 film Mangal Pandey: The Rising.