Plain Tales from the Raj by Charles Allen

Plain Tales from the Raj

Images of British India in the Twentieth Century

Edited by Charles Allen

Readers Union, 1976
Black and white photographic plates, illustrated endpapers
Hardcover, dustjacket

Condition: Very Good
Minor edge and shelf wear with a little rubbing and bumping to edges, corners and covers, previous owners’ inscription on front endpaper, age toned edges.  Dustjacket good with some chipping and small tears, small piece missing at bottom back, discolouration and staining to parts (see photographs)

“Plain Tales from the Raj relives the Anglo-India of some seventy British men and women whose lives followed its last fifty years form the carefree Edwardian childhood under a blazing sun to the final loss of confidence and the twilight years of war, the horrors of Partition, the hurried departures and the extended regrets… Now mostly in their seventies or eighties, these last survivors of the Raj went out to India as ordinary men and women to follow – by today’s standards – extraordinary lives.  As covenanted officials, army officers or ‘other rankers’, policeman, planters, businessmen or missionaries, they followed the set hierarchical patterns of an isolated, self-assured, disciplined community, strictly divided by caste but, as aliens under ne sky, presenting a formidable exterior to the rigours, delights, horrors and temptations of India’s cultural and climatic extremes.”