Angels of Albion: Women of the Indian Mutiny - Tapa dura

This study is about the Indian Mutiny of 1857, told mainly from the women`s point of view. It is a narrative history of the various sieges, massacres, "triumphs" and debacles of the mutiny based on these passive eye-witness accounts, dealing not so much with the military action as with the immediate consequences of it on the women involved. The mutiny is a particularly interesting campaign to explore in this way, since many blamed the memsahibs' behaviour for exacerbating it in the first place, while once the uprising was underway and some of the massacres of British women and children grew apparent, it became a sort of crusade to avenge the daughters of Albion. This book is not a "public" history, narrated by the professional fighters, but a very personal one, witnessed by the memsahibs, the British women who found themselves swept into the melee by default, and who were able to chronicle the whole campaign.

Jane Robinson was born in Edinburgh, brought up in North Yorkshire and read English at Somerville College, Oxford. In the Family Way is her ninth book, and like her previous work, including the acclaimed Bluestockings (25,000 TCM) and A Force to Be Reckoned With: A History of the Women's Institute (8,000 TCM), it confirms her as one of our most engaging and original social historians. Jane lives near Oxford with her husband and two sons.