Victoria And Abdul - Shrabani Basu

Born in 1863, Abdul Karim was a 24-year-old assistant clerk at Agra Jail when he was granted the opportunity of a lifetime – to leave India, travel to England and find employment as personal attendant to the great Empress herself, Queen Victoria. Within a year of her employing him and his introducing her to the delights of curry, she promoted him. He would no longer be a mere servant, but henceforth he was now her teacher and clerk, or Munshi, with responsibility for instructing her in Indian affairs and the Urdu language. To the dismay and ill-concealed anger of nearly all her family and ... more