The British in India

The British in India is an exceptional book. It evokes those animated crowd scenes painted by William Frith, full of people going about their workaday lives, or enjoying themselves. These paintings enchanted the Victorians, prompting them to ask: who are these people, where do they come from, what are they saying and thinking, and what will become of them? David Gilmour's canvas is British India and he provides the answers in a penetrating and vivid portrait of the British men and women who ran the show from the mid-18th century to 1947.

Lawrence James, The Times

Hugely researched and elegantly written, sensitive to the ironies of the past and brimming with colourful details, his book has no time for academic jargon or pretentious theorising ... Gilmour is interested in human complexity, not in moralistic posturing. Perhaps that is why his books sell

Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

This is the best kind of history: meticulously researched, elegantly and entertainingly written, and as wide in its sympathies as it is long in its reach

Peter Parker, Spectator

The narrative is studded with nuggets that illuminate the relationship between Britain and the sub-continent ... magisterial

Navtej Sarna, Financial Times