Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary

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Sophia's contributions to the Suffrage movement were extensive, part of Emmeline Pankhurst's inner circle - and she used her elevated status to work towards the cause. I knew literally nothing about the Maharaja Duleep Singh, Sophia and her siblings, and this book was an absorbing biographical insight into their lives. The Kor-i-noor is the diamond in the center of the front cross on this crown. This is what reading nonfiction gets you. It gets you yelling at the news in an very angry, yet informed, way. Anand vividly paints the picture of a society girl turned revolutionary ... With deftness and sensibility, Anand tells of the extraordinary contradictions at the heart of the relationship between the Queen and this family ... Anand's skill is to bring to life a character whose name does not figure in the annals of the suffragette movement * Observer * She was born to first-generation Punjabi immigrants to the UK. Her late father Dr Chaitenya Anand, a general practitioner, raised her with a sense of how vital it was to know who you are. “He encouraged me to examine our history,” she says. Her mother Shashi Anand, a retired teacher, “is the best storyteller, a fabulous mimic. I think my desire to tell stories comes from her.” Sophia is so well researched that this is likely to remain a definitive account ... Anand's passion shines * Daily Express *

The royal office refused Duleep’s re-entry into India, fearful that his presence might spark an insurrection. Feeling trapped, he turned his attention to fashioning his British countryside home into a Moghul palace. Sophia grew up with leopards prowling in pens below her bedroom window and Indian hunting hawks falling from the sky due to the cold. Duleep eventually died alone in Paris. From the debris of her father’s dynasty, Princess Sophia channelled her fury into becoming patron saint of the underdogIt turned out to not be very hard to dig up unusual information on Singh. “People didn’t know anything about her. Everything was new. And I was very happy to find people who were still alive who had known her,” Anand says. “Those people brought to life what I was learning in dusty files and once-classified documents in British archives. Those people made her real.” In 1876 Sophia Duleep Singh was born into Indian royalty. Her father, Maharajah Duleep Singh, was heir to the Kingdom of the Sikhs, one of the greatest empires of the Indian subcontinent, a realm that stretched from the lush Kashmir Valley to the craggy foothills of the Khyber Pass and included the mighty cities of Lahore and Peshawar. It was a territory irresistible to the British, who plundered everything, including the fabled Koh-I-Noor diamond. Jonathan Dimbleby hands Any Answers? baton to Anita Anand on Radio 4". BBC Media Centre. 23 May 2012 . Retrieved 11 August 2012. Anand, Anita (27 September 2005). "At the heart of a heated debate". BBC News . Retrieved 21 October 2021. In 2022, Anand collaborated with historian William Dalrymple to create the podcast Empire, which examines the British East India Company and British involvement and influence on India. [9] The pair had previously worked together on the book Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World's Most Infamous Diamond.

Her involvement with the Indian independence movement was limited by her life in England, but she still knew and supported prominent pre-war campaigners for political reform. The accounts of her visits to India give really interesting insight into colonial India. She never lived there, although one of her older sisters settled in Lahore. Throughout her life Sophia’s relationships with her five siblings were deeply important to her, something conveyed very well in this biography. She also loved animals and bred dogs, with a particular fondness for pomeranians. I appreciated the unconventional lives of all three sisters: Sophia never married, Catherine settled in Germany with a female life partner, and Bamba attempted to become a doctor in American before moving to India. The British colonial authorities were so concerned about the destabilising effect the family’s influence could have on the Punjab that for decades they were forbidden from going to India at all. When they did, their activities were closely (and clumsily) monitored by the colonial authorities. During WWI Sophia became a volunteer nurse and fundraiser for Indian troops; during WWII she sheltered evacuees. Delightfully, Anand was able to speak to the evacuees themselves for this book. The detail that Sophia made a little girl promise to always use her vote is very moving. Vivid and compelling … Anand writes with the vigour and imaginative reach of a novelist. The many horrors of her enthralling narrative are lightened with judicious flashes of dry wit and a fine eye for detail … A gripping, emotionally powerful story Until October 2007, Anand presented in the 10:00pm till 1:00am slot on Monday to Thursdays on BBC Radio 5 Live. She went on to co-present the station's weekday Drive (4:00–7:00pm) slot with Peter Allen, having replaced Jane Garvey in 2007. Aasmah Mir replaced her when she left for maternity leave. [6]My first major role on an award-winning, crowd-rousing, primetime British television show, Bodyguard, as the suicide-bomber Nadia, became a national talking point on the portrayal of South Asian women on screen. To be the poster person of this timely moment of discourse felt terrifying. It made me question my internal GPS: what was my own position in this global conversation on representation? M.S. Merian - R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences: Metamorphoses of the Political (ICAS:MP), New Delhi, India In July 2011 Anand left the Daily Politics to present a new show called Double Take on Radio 5 Live on Sunday mornings. [7] In June 2012, Anand took over from Jonathan Dimbleby as the presenter of Radio 4's Any Answers? Saturday current affairs phone-in programme between 2:00 and 2:45pm. [8] What do you do if you are the daughter of an estranged Indian royal family marooned in the heart of late-Victorian and Edwardian London? You join the ranks of the various revolutionaries and other assorted malcontents, while maintaining social proprieties to the very end.