by Anand, Anita
To my agent, Patrick Walsh, there really are not enough words under ‘gratitude’ in the thesaurus. You are smart, calm, funny and kind. In short, you rock! I hope you know it.
To my family, Bully, Anup, Christina and the teenies – Mouse and I-man: you have been boundless in your love, patience and understanding. A first book is scary. You have kept me level, you have kept me laughing.
To my mother Shashi Anand – Mum – without you this book just would never have been written. You have looked after Hari and the rest of us when my head has been stuck in a deadline. You never let me down. This book is supposed to be about strong women. I know few who are stronger than you. ‘Thank you’ seems an inadequate phrase. And to my father – I know you’re not here to see this but I bet you’d get a kick out of it. These are the times I miss you most.
To Simon Singh – my much smarter better half. Lovely, clever and kind, you have held my hand from the moment Sophia barged her way into our lives. You have always been interested and constructive and encouraging – even when you had a book on the boil yourself. You aren’t just my husband, you are my best mate. And as for Hari – he continues to be a very reliable cuddle generator. Every author needs one.
Finally to my nieces – Mahalia, Nidhi, Richa, Taanya, Nikita, Divya, Shweta, Radhika, Nandni, Ishu and Ridhma – and my goddaughters Eva, Honor and JJ: please make me this solemn vow – even if you don’t know what one of those is yet. Whatever happens, you have to vote. Wherever and whenever there is a chance to exercise that right you are to take it. A lot of very fine and brave women risked everything to give you that voice. Never forget what they fought for. Never let anyone take it away.
Image Section
Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, c. 1900. A rare photograph of the princess in Indian dress. She preferred Western fashions.
The submission of the Maharajah Duleep Singh to the British Governor General, Sir Henry Hardinge, c. 1850. Separated from his mother, Rani Jindan, the Maharajah was forced to sign away his kingdom, his crown and the Koh-I-Noor diamond.
Maharajah Ranjit Singh, the ‘Lion of the Punjab’ and Sophia’s paternal grandfather.
Rani Jindan, Sophia’s paternal grandmother.
Sophia’s grandparents on her mother’s side: German merchant Herr Ludwig Muller and his Abyssinian slave mistress, Sofia.
Queen Victoria, who described herself as Duleep Singh’s ‘best friend’ and took a maternal interest in him. She became Sophia’s godmother and principal benefactor.
Sophia’s father, Maharajah Duleep Singh. His youthful beauty captivated Queen Victoria.
Sophia’s mother, Maharani Bamba, whose name means ‘pink’. From childhood she blushed at any attention.
The Maharajah’s coat of arms, designed by Prince Albert. The motto translates: ‘to do good rather than be conspicuous’. Sophia would use the starred coronet above as her own crest.
The Royal hunting party, including ‘Bertie’, the Prince of Wales (seated, sixth from left). He was a regular visitor, as were other members of the English aristocracy. This photograph was taken at Elveden in 1876, just weeks after Sophia was born. The Maharajah’s (seated, fourth from right) increasingly extravagant lifestyle was already driving him to bankruptcy.
The drawing room at Elveden Hall. The Maharajah Duleep Singh wanted his Suffolk home to look like a Moghul palace.
The Maharajah’s profligacy led to squabbles with the British government over money, and increasingly he became a figure of fun.
Maharani Bamba and her children, ( from left to right) Frederick, Sophia (on her mother’s knee), Victor, Catherine and Bamba, outside Elveden Hall. Queen Victoria liked the boys to keep their hair long.
With Frederick and Victor sent away to school, Catherine (standing, left), Bamba (right), Edward (seated, left) and Sophia (right) relied on each other for support.
The strain of her husband’s infidelities and financial difficulties took a terrible toll on Maharani Bamba. She took to ‘drinking alcohol to injurious extent’.
Sophia (centre) and her sisters, Bamba (left) and Catherine, at ease on their brother Frederick’s Old Buckenham estate. The three sisters would be devoted to each other all their lives.
Catherine and Bamba Duleep Singh (seated centre front) attended Somerville College, Oxford. Sophia’s education was not such a priority; her guardians wanted to distance her from what was deemed to be the bad influence of her sisters.
Left to right, Princesses Bamba, Catherine and Sophia Duleep Singh at their debut at Buckingham Palace, 1894.
Princess Sophia (centre) with her half-sisters, Princesses Pauline (left) and Irene (front), and her stepmother ‘Marini’ Ada. Catherine and Bamba detested their stepmother; only Sophia attempted a relationship.
Princess Sophia surrounded by her beloved animals – her ‘houndses’ meant more to her than most people did. She became a champion dog-breeder at the Ladies’ Kennel Club and was a formidable horsewoman.
The streets of Lahore, c. 1900. Against the wishes of the British government, Sophia travelled to India. There she was confronted with Indian poverty and gained an understanding of what had been taken from her family by the British. The experience radicalised her thinking.
The villages of the Punjab were a world away from the opulence of Sophia’s life in London. She was astonished to find that wherever she went the name of her grandfather, Ranjit Singh, was still venerated.
Famine ravaged India at the turn of the century. Many blamed the British for an inadequate response, which they insisted prolonged the humanitarian disaster.
Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, was despised by the Duleep Singh sisters.
The 1903 Delhi Durbar. Curzon orchestrated an overwhelming display of British might. As punishment for her defiance in travelling to India, Sophia was prohibited from taking her place in the Punjab camp. She was also shunned by British dignitaries and officials.
After spending time with Nationalists Gopal Krishna Gokhale (left) and Lala Lajpat Rai (right), Sophia became an ardent anti-colonialist. When Lajpat Rai was arrested for sedition, Sophia declared ‘Oh you wicked English how I long for your downfall … Ah India, awake and free yourself.’
The lascars were Indian merchant seamen who often found themselves badly abused on British ships. Frequently they were abandoned in London’s docks. Sophia made it her mission to help them.
In Britain other privileged women were throwing themselves into the suffragette movement under the leadership of Emmeline Pankhurst.
Their tactics were becoming increasingly militant: they marched, threw rocks at government buildings and shops, smashing windows on Bond Street (above), and torched landmarks, including the Tea Pavilion in Sophia’s beloved Kew Gardens.
Sophia driving the suffragette press carts through London in 1911. Her high-profile support embarrassed both the government and the Crown.
Caxton Hall on Black Friday, 18 November 1910. Sophia (circled) would later lead the march to Parliament alongside Emmeline Pankhurst and a group of ‘celebrity suffragettes’. They expected trouble, but nothing on the scale of the violence they would face.
The brutality of Black Friday, as reported on the front page of the Daily Mirror, shocked the nation. Sophia’s friend Ada Wright is pictured lying semi-conscious on the ground. Sophia was herself arrested for her part in the clashes between suffragettes and the police.
In her best handwriting, in vibrant blue ink, Sophia defaced her 1911 census paper with the protest ‘No vote, no census’. ‘As women do not count, they refuse to be counted, and I have a conscientious objection to filling in this form.’
Sophia sells copies of The Suffragette outside Hampton Court. Her actions sent King George V into a rage, prompting the Palace to ask ‘if anything could be done to stop her?’
Indian soldiers in the trenches during the First World War – more than a million would eventually serve. One despairing sepoy wrote, ‘This is not a war; it is the ending of the world’, and described the dea
ths of his comrades-in-arms as ‘the grinding of corn in a mill’.
Sophia took up the cause of the Indian soldiers. Some of the worst casualties from the Western Front came from the old Sikh kingdom of her grandfather.
Sophia volunteered as a nurse, working with the flood of wounded Indian soldiers pouring into Britain from the Front. Brighton Pavilion (above) became one of many makeshift hospitals which sprang up overnight.
Sophia (third from left) with a group of her fellow volunteer nurses. All were British and some, who had served the Raj in India, spoke the language of the soldiers better than she did.
As well as nursing the troops, Sophia ( fourth from left) threw herself into raising funds for warm clothes and huts for Indian soldiers. Her efforts won the praise of Field Marshal Lord French, and scuppered the government’s plan to suppress her involvement.
Punjabi patients could not believe they were being treated by their princess.
The Snell sisters, Ethel (left) and Margaret (middle), both maids and later friends of Sophia, and the redoubtable Margaret Mayes (right), housekeeper at Faraday House.
Despite her activism, Sophia retained the keys to Hampton Court Palace, opposite her own grace-and-favour lodgings at Faraday House. She regularly walked her dogs in the grounds.
The kitchens at Faraday House. With war declared and the threat of Hitler’s Blitz looming, Sophia reluctantly let go most of her staff and prepared to evacuate to Penn in Buckinghamshire.
Lane and Bosie married and their child Catherine became the centre of Sophia’s world. As her godmother, she even renamed the child ‘Drovna’, a fragment of her own unorthodox middle name.
Sophia’s house, Rathenrea, a sprawling bungalow in Penn. It became a haven for her new family and for three children, the Sarbutts, evacuated from London.
Sophia retained Lane, her driver, and her feisty new housekeeper, Bosie – the only woman who seemed able to stand up to the increasingly irascible princess.
All three Sarbutt children, (left to right) Shirley, John and Michael, the ‘little pickle’.
Bamba, the self-styled Queen of Punjab. The servants loathed her.
Catherine with her beloved Lina Schaeffer, separated only by death in 1938.
Sophia in the garden of Rathenrea, with her ancient, bad-tempered parrot, Akbar. She had finally found contentment surrounded by her children and her animals.
Sophia guarded Drovna and the Sarbutt children like a lioness, often sending the chauffeur to collect them from school. She once lavished an entire fortnight’s sugar ration on cakes and treats.
Sophia (left) and Catherine at a suffragette dinner in 1937. When Catherine died in 1942 it was Sophia who found her body. It broke her. ‘It completely stunned and stupefied me – and I couldn’t shake myself up to ordinary things again.’
Sophia and her beloved god-daughter Drovna. The princess was determined to raise the housekeeper’s daughter as a lady and revelled in her maternal role.
A Note on the Author
Anita Anand has been a radio and television journalist for almost twenty years. She is the presenter of Any Answers on BBC Radio 4. During her career she has also presented Drive, Doubletake and the Anita Anand Show on Radio 5 Live, and Saturday Live, The Westminster Hour, Beyond Westminster, Midweek and Woman’s Hour on Radio 4. On BBC television she has presented The Daily Politics, The Sunday Politics and Newsnight. She lives in west London. This is her first book.
@tweeter_anita
Copyright © 2015 by Anita Anad
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce, or otherwise make
available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including
without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording,
or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person
who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable
to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. For information, write to
Bloomsbury USA, 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018.
Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders
of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been overlooked
the publishers would be glad to hear from them.
Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York
Bloomsbury is a trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR
eISBN: 978-1-63286-082-8
First published in the United States in 2015
This electronic edition published in January 2015
To find out more about our authors and their books please visit
www.bloomsbury.com where you will find extracts, author interviews
and details of forthcoming events, and to be the first to hear about latest
releases and special offers, sign up for our newsletters here.