Pulitzer Prize - shortlisted Deborah Baker’s ‘The
Last Englishmen: Love, War and the End of Empire’ is a sprawling biographical
saga that is a post – mortem of the last days of the British Empire in India.
The author narrates the stories of pioneering geologist, John Auden and
surveyor, Michael Spender who was the first to draw a detailed map of the north
face of Everest, using his skills in photogrammetry. Both men, in addition to
having famous poet brothers in W.H. Auden and Stephen Spender, vied for the hand
of the same woman, Nancy Sharp, the English painter and sought to be included
in an Everest expedition which had become “…an issue of National and Imperial
importance” with diehards of colonialism seeing it as a means to reassert and
consolidate their power over India.
In a surprising move, Baker is not content to chart
their lives and measure the successes of these two extraordinary men, though
she does do that while opting to shift focus without warning to a dizzying
array of colourful characters, who are an eclectic mix of writers, artists,
freedom fighters, politicians, communists and even double agents all of whom
made their own mark on history and left valuable impressions behind of the
cultural, political and moral landscape of a crumbling empire. Louis MacNeice
(who interestingly carried a torch for the redoubtable Nancy Sharp as well)
invited to cover the Partition with a view of writing a series of radio plays
for BBC, Christopher Isherwood who co – wrote a play with W.H. Auden entitled,
‘The Ascent of F6’about a climber who mounts an expedition to Everest and
battles the elements as well as rival nations in a race to the peak, Michael
John Carritt, Indian Civil Service Officer and communist sympathizer, and
Sudhin Datta, a Bengali intellectual who founded a literary journal, ‘Parichay’
and was deeply conflicted by his love of English literature and hatred of heavy
– handed imperialists, sashay into the narrative at will.
Their stories have mixed results in that they do
shed light on a veritable avalanche of complex historical facts which manage to
occasionally engage the reader while also leaving him or her disconcerted with
the sheer density of information conveyed detachedly in opaque prose and a
penchant for dogged descriptiveness that is not always flavoursome enough to be
savoured. The frequent meandering detours and a surfeit of material crammed
into an overcrowded stage with too much happening at all levels can be most
vexing. Oftentimes, the process of perusing this excellent material feels as
laborious and cumbersome as scaling an unforgiving peak under extremely
unfavourable conditions which makes one want to give up in abject despair.
However, in the unlikely event that the modern reader afflicted with ADHD
manages to persist, the rewards are not entirely non – existent.
Baker is determined to perform a delicate balancing
act between the opposing viewpoints of the conqueror and conquered and is
even-handed to the point of being exasperating. However her unflinching
portrayal of the likes of Winston Churchill who felt the Indians were a ‘foul
race’ that ‘breed like rabbits’ and needed to be bombed into submission if
necessary as well as her exposure of his role in the Bengal famine strip away
the glittering façade of the so – called ‘greatest Briton ever’ and reveal him
to be the unabashed racist and white supremacist he most certainly was. The
chequered career of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, the ‘Butcher of Bengal’ and
fifth prime minister of Pakistan, particularly his interaction with Gandhi
makes for interesting reading.
Some of the most harrowing portions of the book are
Baker’s final chapters, reconstructing the terrible Bengal famine and the
communal riots during the partition. Her decision not to make it unduly
melodramatic but rather keep it simple and clinical even, succeeds in making
the horror all the more stomach turning. If only Baker had managed to hit her
stride sooner!
This book review originally appeared here.
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