Latest news with #ZadieSmith
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Gurnaik Johal: ‘I had no idea Zadie Smith was such a big deal!'
My earliest reading memory I used to regularly reread my bright green copy of the Guinness Book of Records. I can still clearly picture the woman with the longest fingernails in the world. My favourite book growing up I loved the world-building in Michelle Paver's Wolf Brother series. Its stone age setting was different to anything I knew, but so easy to imagine being a part of. The book that changed me as a teenager I bought NW by Zadie Smith because its cover design was so striking. I had no idea she was such a big deal! Once I finished it, I sought out the books that she recommended. That's how I ended up reading Elizabeth Strout, George Saunders and Gustave Flaubert – which was a very good place to start. The writer who changed my mind I didn't read biographies until I stumbled upon Dana Stevens's book about Buster Keaton, Camera Man. She changed my mind about the genre, and now I can't watch Keaton's films without thinking about scenes from the book. The book that made me want to be a writer Reading short stories at university made me want to become a writer. Extra by Yiyun Li, A Temporary Matter by Jhumpa Lahiri and Recitatif by Toni Morrison stand out as early examples that got me to think differently about reading and writing. The book or author I came back to I didn't get Heart of Darkness at all when I first read it, and was too quick to judge it. Thankfully, I revisited it and now count Joseph Conrad as one of my favourite writers. I love his prose style and the scale of ambition in his novels. The book I reread Teaching courses on the short story allowed me to regularly revisit some favourites. Two stories that never left my syllabus were Pet Milk and Paper Lantern by Stuart Dybek. After dozens of rereads, Dybek's writing always feels new – I get swept along every time. The book I could never read again I listened to Karl Ove Knausgård's My Struggle while training for a marathon. I think if I read it again, it would invoke some kind of Pavlovian response. The book I discovered later in life I have myself to blame for reading Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe later than I should have – it was on my university course but I missed the lecture. Since reading it, I struggle to get on with novels that don't have any oomph to them. To hold my wavering attention, there's got to be a sense of adventure and play either at the level of the plot or the sentence – Robinson Crusoe has both. The book I am currently reading I'm slowly making my way through Larry McMurtry's epic western Lonesome Dove, which is a comedy of manners set on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana. The free indirect style is very Jane Austen and the dialogue very John Wayne. My comfort read I sometimes take Sheila Heti's Alphabetical Diaries on the tube to work. Dipping in and out of it at random is as close as I can get to meditation during rush hour. Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal is published by Serpent's Tail. To support the Guardian order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Gurnaik Johal: ‘I had no idea Zadie Smith was such a big deal!'
My earliest reading memory I used to regularly reread my bright green copy of the Guinness Book of Records. I can still clearly picture the woman with the longest fingernails in the world. My favourite book growing up I loved the world-building in Michelle Paver's Wolf Brother series. Its stone age setting was different to anything I knew, but so easy to imagine being a part of. The book that changed me as a teenager I bought NW by Zadie Smith because its cover design was so striking. I had no idea she was such a big deal! Once I finished it, I sought out the books that she recommended. That's how I ended up reading Elizabeth Strout, George Saunders and Gustave Flaubert – which was a very good place to start. The writer who changed my mind I didn't read biographies until I stumbled upon Dana Stevens's book about Buster Keaton, Camera Man. She changed my mind about the genre, and now I can't watch Keaton's films without thinking about scenes from the book. The book that made me want to be a writer Reading short stories at university made me want to become a writer. Extra by Yiyun Li, A Temporary Matter by Jhumpa Lahiri and Recitatif by Toni Morrison stand out as early examples that got me to think differently about reading and writing. The book or author I came back to I didn't get Heart of Darkness at all when I first read it, and was too quick to judge it. Thankfully, I revisited it and now count Joseph Conrad as one of my favourite writers. I love his prose style and the scale of ambition in his novels. The book I reread Teaching courses on the short story allowed me to regularly revisit some favourites. Two stories that never left my syllabus were Pet Milk and Paper Lantern by Stuart Dybek. After dozens of rereads, Dybek's writing always feels new – I get swept along every time. The book I could never read again I listened to Karl Ove Knausgård's My Struggle while training for a marathon. I think if I read it again, it would invoke some kind of Pavlovian response. The book I discovered later in life I have myself to blame for reading Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe later than I should have – it was on my university course but I missed the lecture. Since reading it, I struggle to get on with novels that don't have any oomph to them. To hold my wavering attention, there's got to be a sense of adventure and play either at the level of the plot or the sentence – Robinson Crusoe has both. The book I am currently reading I'm slowly making my way through Larry McMurtry's epic western Lonesome Dove, which is a comedy of manners set on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana. The free indirect style is very Jane Austen and the dialogue very John Wayne. My comfort read I sometimes take Sheila Heti's Alphabetical Diaries on the tube to work. Dipping in and out of it at random is as close as I can get to meditation during rush hour. Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal is published by Serpent's Tail. To support the Guardian order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
The Citizen
29-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Citizen
Reading books is the new sexy
Reading is the new sexy, books are back, and they're printed, from bookstores. Over the past few years people have... Reading is the new sexy, books are back, and they're printed, from bookstores. Over the past few years people have started shelving devices and reverted to turning pages. Social media's full of it with channels like Book Tok and even Instagram turning the well read into sexy, cultural winners. Reading is no longer just a pastime, it's becoming cultural currency and it's hot. A recent article in The Guardian reported that Gen Z is 'flocking to physical books and libraries,' with print books making up 80% of their purchases. Libraries are suddenly popular again, with a 71% increase in foot traffic from young people. They are checking out Jane Austen and Zadie Smith with the same enthusiasm they reserve for the latest Sabrina Carpenter album. Books are no longer just something to read. Literature seems to have become an accessory to trend. Sylvia de Wet, Publishing Director at Penguin Random House South Africa, said the resurgence is tied to a larger cultural change. 'We're seeing a broader cultural return to tactile, meaningful experiences, and books are at the heart of that shift,' she said. 'In a world saturated with digital media, reading offers something both grounding and enriching. For many South Africans, books have become lifestyle statements and a form of self-expression.' Larger cultural change This isn't just about what's on the page, either. Covers matter a lot in a society obsessed with visual appeal. Readers are posing with their current reads like fashion accessories, and it's not by accident. 'It goes back to the aesthetic of how books look and feel,' said Kelly Ansara, Marketing and Publicity Director at Jonathan Ball Publishers. 'Do you feel cool pulling this book out at a trendy bar with a cocktail or coffee shop? It all goes back to how the book looks. But will you also look cute, smart or professional?' Also Read: Chris Carter's 'Death Watcher': Unputdownable Online magazine Rowdy called it 'a sexy renaissance,' with readers turning to romance, fantasy and even classic literature. The visual language of reading has changed. BookTok is awash with soft pastel spines, annotated page flips, and tear-streaked reaction videos. And it's moving books. Ansara said genre fiction and fantasy are seeing the biggest gains. 'Readers aren't afraid of chunky reads or heavy subjects, but they do want to escape sometimes and read fun romance or easy beach read thrillers,' she said. 'However, we still see the big sales in local political biographies or current affairs books. Non-fiction still is the biggest seller in the South African market.' Non-fiction a mainstay in reading De Wet added that nonfiction remains a mainstay, but fiction is fighting back in all the right ways. 'Escapism remains a powerful driver,' she said. 'Irma Joubert's sweeping historical novels, Jackie Phamotse's emotionally charged dramas, Sven Axelrad's whimsical and wildly original narratives, and Martin Steyn and Leon van Nierop's pulse-racing thrillers all show how deeply readers continue to embrace historical fiction, romance, crime and suspense.' It's not just what readers are reading, it's how they're reading. Social media has fused style and substance. 'Readers are no longer passive receivers of content,' said de Wet. 'They write online book reviews, participate in online book discussions, and actively promote the authors and books they love. It becomes part of their own image and identity.' Authors are also being packaged as cultural figures, not just writers. 'An author is no longer just a name on a cover. They're a voice, a personality and often a cultural influencer,' said de Wet. Bookish Cool is amplified by aesthetics According to Rowdy Magazine, this rise in 'bookish cool' isn't new. It has beginnings in past literary movements but is now amplified by aesthetics. The article also noted an 8.2% jump in global book sales in 2020, a trend that's kept steady. The aesthetic angle is important, but so is identity. 'Books also bring the look and feel of aesthetic, so be it expensive designer books, or buckled paperbacks,' said Ansara. 'People are using books to find identity or sense of self, and to connect with others.' This visibility has translated into sales. At Penguin Random House SA, de Wet said they've 'seen growth in key categories,' with international fiction like Jojo Moyes still going strong, and local favourites like Antjie Krog's Blood's Inner Rhyme and Tom Eaton's An Act of Murder drawing readers across the board. Ansara noted that South African fiction sales follow different rules than international ones, and while trends like dragons and enemies-to-lovers romances dominate BookTok abroad, the local market has its own rhythm. 'We have only just stuck to our publishing values that lean neither left nor right,' she said. For publishers, it means adapting. De Wet said discoverability is now digital-first. 'BookTok, Instagram and other social media have become important pathways into reading communities, particularly for younger audiences. We're leaning into these channels while still nurturing traditional bookselling partnerships,' she said. Now Read: Muse in motion: Louisa Treger redefines the creative spark
The Guardian
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
My perfect holiday reading, by Bernardine Evaristo, David Nicholls, Zadie Smith and more
Zadie SmithFor me summer reading is about immersion. Three novels fully absorbed me recently. Flesh by David Szalay is a very smart and stylish novel about the 1%, filtered through the life of a Hungarian bodyguard/driver in their midst. Cécé by Emmelie Prophète (out 23 September) vividly depicts the slums of contemporary Haiti via a very online young sex worker who lives her best life on Facebook. Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie features a series of unforgettable women trying to work out what love means. The summer read I'm looking forward to myself is Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, a true original. David NichollsI would recommend two books, 800 pages and a shade under 150, depending on what you can carry. Helen Garner's collected diaries, How to End a Story, are frank, gripping and revealing about family, marriage and the writing life, while Anthony Shapland's debut, A Room Above a Shop, is a small, tender love story, almost a poem. Bernardine EvaristoNo Small Thing by Orlaine McDonald is one of the best debut novels I've read in recent years. A family of women, mother, daughter and granddaughter, carry unresolved and unspoken trauma that's passed down through the generations. This poisons their relationships and ability to fully function in society. Intense, visceral and beautifully written, McDonald's novel captures their damaged souls. Stag Dance by Torrey Peters is the follow-up to her bestselling novel Detransition, Baby. Consisting of three short stories and a novella, this is adventurous, mind-expanding and provocative fiction that skilfully serves up different possibilities of gender and sexuality. Yael van der WoudenThe Pretender by Jo Harkin tells the story of Lambert Simnel, the Tudor Pretender. It's funny and it's devastating. I'm having a fantastic time reading it. Katherine RundellMy favourite novel so far this year has been James by Percival Everett. It has the satirical bite of his previous work, but a furious generosity that is its own. A reimagining of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, its premise is that the language of the enslaved is a learned facade to appease the white slavers. I read Huckleberry Finn first and then James immediately afterwards: a fantastic reading experience. Olivia LaingI saved Gliff by Ali Smith for the perfect moment: the day that Keir Starmer gave his 'island of strangers' speech. What a balm and a corrective, then, to read this propulsive dystopian novel about how to refuse the imperatives of fascism, how to stay open to strangers in all their guises. Beautiful and visionary. Reading about spycops might not seem the obvious beach activity, but Disclosure by Kate Wilson is a gripping account of an environmental activist who discovered her former boyfriend was a police spy, a technique regularly used to infiltrate and discredit non-violent activists. The most invigorating aspect of this disturbing book is how the women turned the tables, piecing together evidence and eventually winning a victory in court. Jonathan CoeIf you're heading to a British seaside town this summer, the book you should take with you is Birding by Rose Ruane. Set in a desolate unnamed resort where the pastel facades of Victorian buildings 'crumble like stale cake after a party', and the pier boasts a helter skelter 'crusted with stalactites of guano', this is the bleak but hopeful story of Lydia, once one half of a fleetingly successful girl band, piecing her life back together in the face of falsely remembered trauma. Ruane is a marvellous writer whose prose glitters with perfect metaphors and wincingly caustic one-liners. In fact you should take this on holiday wherever you're going. Anne EnrightLiterary biographies are a great choice for the summer: I raced through Frances Wilson's whip-smart Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark, and am currently loving An Afterlife, Francesca Wade's searching and eloquent double biography of the life and posthumous reputation of Gertrude Stein. In fiction, my big recent discovery has been the work of Samanta Schweblin. Good and Evil and Other Stories is coming out in August and they are just stellar – extreme, uncanny and beautifully controlled. Also there's a backlist for me to catch up on. Time to clear a new space on my bookshelf. Samantha HarveyAbdulrazak Gurnah's Theft is complex in its themes of class and entitlement, but it's also, fundamentally, a piece of great, satisfying storytelling to lose yourself in. Katie Kitamura's latest novel, Audition, is slick, sharp, strange and singular. I love her work; she's a writer who can conjure intrigue from the scantest detail, and you'll gulp this novel down in one in-breath. Michael RosenKiku: The Japanese Art of Good Listening by Dr Haru Yamada. It's strange that when we say the word 'conversation', the first thing we think of is speakers. Yet, an equal part of conversation is listening. In fact, the speaker speaks with an eye and ear out on who the listener is and how they're reacting. This is a great insight into how all this plays out, seen through the prism of Japanese culture and language. I'd also recommend Beyond the Secret Garden: Racially Minoritised People in British Children's Books by Darren Chetty and Karen Sands-O'Connor. What's it like as a child to read classic children's books if you can't see yourself in the garden? Or to only see yourself there as people who are 'less than' the great characters and heroes? Or flip that over and ask, what does all this do for those who see themselves in books as always centre stage? Colm TóibínMore than a quarter of a century ago in Sydney, I caught a glimpse across a room of the novelist Helen Garner and her companion, the novelist Murray Bail. I could hardly imagine that I would become obsessed with both of them courtesy of Garner's marvellous How to End a Story: Collected Diaries, all 800 pages of it. This diary begins by registering what is ordinary, how days are, what it is like to be a writer, a daughter, a mother, a lover, a citizen of Melbourne. Part of it is a doomed love story. So, I have also been reading some of the writings of the object of Garner's attention, three short books by Bail: Longhand: A Writer's Notebook; Notebooks 1970-2003; and his luminous and mysterious semi-novel called He. Ali SmithIt's a Muriel Spark summer for me. There's the first volume of her Letters (1944-1963) edited by Dan Gunn (out 28 August); I can't wait to read it. Brand new right now is Frances Wilson's truly amazing biography of Spark's formative years and work, Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark. An electrifying work in itself, often as mazy and gripping as a psychological thriller and as unsettling, sharp and playfully uncanny as a piece of Spark's own fiction, it's also one of the most revealing books about societal postwar paranoia and nervous fracture I've ever read. My other summer recommendation is also a touch Sparkian in a world distracted by fakery: Nell Stevens's marvel of a novel The Original, a story of creativity, legacy and real worth, is full of narrative cunning, narrative goodness. What a very good heart it has. Mick HerronIf poetry on the beach appeals – and why wouldn't it; it sounds like a cocktail – Michael Longley's Ash Keys, published shortly before his death in January, is strongly recommended. Selected volumes are intended to provoke new readings of familiar poems, and this one works superbly – I had undervalued his later verse, thinking it slight in comparison to earlier work. This proves me wrong. Abigail Dean's third novel, meanwhile, continues her winning streak, confirming her aptitude for examining the aftermath of trauma. The Death of Us, a love story interrupted by violent intrusion, is moving and deeply impressive. Curtis SittenfeldAnimal Instinct by Amy Shearn is a delicious, sexy, insightful, big-hearted joy (that, believe it or not, features both the pandemic and divorce). After her marriage ends, middle-aged Brooklyn mom-of-three Rachel Bloomstein goes on many dates with men and women, has wild yet as-responsible-as-possible sex, and works on creating an AI chatbot that will combine the best parts of all her romantic prospects. Rachel is so open, generous-hearted and funny that reading about her makes you feel like one of the friends who comes over for drinks on her balcony. Rutger BregmanBury the Chains by Adam Hochschild and Suffrage by Ellen Carol DuBois are two gripping accounts of what may be the greatest human rights movements in history: the fight to end slavery and the struggle for women's suffrage. Both are powerful reminders that real change demands extraordinary perseverance. Of the 12 founders of the British Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, only one lived to see slavery abolished across the empire. Of the 68 women at the Seneca Falls convention, just one lived to see women gain the vote – and she was too ill to cast a ballot. Their stories are a call to all of us still fighting today: for tax justice, for democracy, for an end to the moral catastrophe of factory farming, and so much more. William DalrympleFara Dabhoiwala's remarkable global history, What Is Free Speech? is ostensibly a very different book from his first, on the origins of sex, yet it shares its predecessor's wit, fluency and dazzling erudition. Constantly surprising, it reminds us quite what an innovative idea free speech was when it was first upheld as a civilised goal in the 18th century. Examining who in history could speak, and who was silenced, Dabhoiwala reminds us of the crucial relationship between speech and power. How the World Made the West by Josephine Quinn is one of the most fascinating works of global history to appear for years. Incredibly wide-ranging, it connects disparate parts of the ancient world with dazzling shafts of insight and intuition, held together by vast scholarship, elegant prose and an enviable lightness of touch. It completely reframes our conception of the western classical world, allowing us to understand just how globalised and interconnected mankind has always been. Finally, Pankaj Mishra illuminates the darkest of landscapes in The World After Gaza. It is as thoughtful, scholarly and subtle as it is brave and original. By a long way the most horrifying and thought-provoking book I have read this year. Sarah PerrySarah Hall's new novel Helm (out 28 August) is incandescently good (even by her incandescent standards). It spans thousands of years up to the present day, and concerns the Helm wind, a phenomenon that blows down from a Cumbrian hilltop and wreaks mischievous havoc. There are meteorologists and stone-age women visionaries and peculiar unbiddable girls and terrifying medieval priests: it is sexy and funny and erudite and strange, and the prose is dizzyingly good. Up there with her best. I'm also looking forward to reading Mic Wright's Breaking: How the Media Works, When it Doesn't and Why it Matters. Wright is always excoriatingly funny and righteously indignant: this promises to be all those things and more. Nussaibah YounisJen Beagin's clever, hilarious and absolutely bonkers novel Big Swiss will have you laughing out loud and questioning everything you think you know about trauma. Greta, a middle-aged woman fleeing her past, takes a job with therapist Om, transcribing his therapy sessions. But this is small town Hudson, and Greta soon bumps into voices she recognises. When she develops an obsession with Om's sardonic and larger-than-life client Big Swiss, shenanigans ensue. Stag Dance by Torrey Peters, a quartet of stories, covers utterly original ground, and will keep you captivated with its voice, energy and wit. There's a hormone-inhibiting virus forcing cis people into parity with trans people; there are two loggers in the 1900s battling for the affections of the axeman-in-chief; there's a sexually confused boarding school love story; and a trans fetishist competing for legitimacy with a trans traditionalist. And, randomly, there are a lot of pigs. Florence KnappKakigori Summer by Emily Itami follows three sisters as they briefly return to their childhood home on the Japanese coast. It's a book about belonging, often explored through language, with piercing observations around a family's shorthand, a grandmother's admonishments, and how the peculiarities of Japanese and English culture are highlighted in the words that are absent, and uniquely present, in our vocabularies. It is funny, gentle and warm, though Itami's sentences are never fluffy. And it contains one of the best descriptions of overthinking I've ever read: 'the inside of her head is like the final note of some operatic calamity vibrato-ing without end'. Peter FrankopanI greatly enjoyed Oliver Moody's Baltic: The Future of Europe, which provides revelatory coverage of a region that is not only important but looks likely to be the next arena for competition between Russia and its neighbours. Patrick McGee's Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company is terrific too – not only charting Apple's rise but also that of China's tech sector and its economy as a whole. McGee argues that Apple helped Make China Great Again. I also admired Bijan Omrani's God is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England – a finely judged and beautifully written account. To explore all the books in the Guardian's summer reading list visit Delivery charges may apply.
Scroll.in
08-06-2025
- General
- Scroll.in
Lucknow to Stirling: Ghosts of 1857 in a Scottish Museum
Rudyard Kipling's Kim – that iconic novel of the Raj – first appeared as a serial in McClure's Magazine in December 1900, a month before the death of Queen Victoria. At this point, the British Empire was arguably at its strongest. The event that extended Victoria's reign to India was the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, now referred to as the Indian Uprising or the Great Rebellion. After this, British rule in India passed from the East India Company to the British Crown. Most references to the events of 1857-58 in Kim come from an old Indian villager, 'who had served the [British] government in the days of the Mutiny as a native officer…' He goes on to describe his loyal service for the Company army: 'Nine wounds I bear; a medal and four clasps and the medal of an Order, for my captains, who are now generals, remembered me when the Kaisar-i-Hind had accomplished fifty years of her reign…' Kaisar-i-Hind was the title Queen Victoria assumed as she was proclaimed the Empress of India in 1877. The queen marked the golden jubilee of her reign in 1887, at an event in which several Indian princes and soldiers participated. Exactly a century after Kim, a young British author, born to a Jamaican mother and an English father, debuted with her bestselling novel White Teeth (2000), which turns 25 this year. By the time the English-speaking world woke up to Zadie Smith, the British Raj was, to quote Charles Dickens, as 'dead as a doornail'. Even the English men's cricket team, for long a symbol of the Raj, had a captain who was born in Madras (now Chennai) and had an Indian father. Yet, the 'Mutiny' continued to haunt the multicultural Britons of White Teeth, in which a Bangladeshi immigrant named Samad Iqbal, who had fought for the British Indian Army in World War II, claims to be a great grandson of Mangal Pande, a soldier in the Company army often credited with instigating the rebellion of 1857. The empire was instrumental in Britain's rise as a modern nation state and, in the history of the British Empire, there are few events that left a mark as lasting as the Mutiny of 1857, as reflected in English fiction from Kipling to Zadie Smith. The 'Mutiny', in the shared histories of Britain and India, is today an enduring symbol of the horrors of colonialism for a contemporary Britain grappling with immigration from former colonies such as India. Sitting in a castle in Scotland, a small piece of mutiny-era Lucknow bears the weight of this shared history. A Scottish regiment Trophies of the British triumph over the Indian 'mutineers' occupy pride of place at the Regimental Museum of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, deep inside one of the several grey stone buildings of the Stirling Castle in Scotland. The Highlanders were a Scottish regiment that became famous as 'The Thin Red Line' in 1854 during the Crimean War. Journalist WH Russell, who gave them this epithet, was also present in India as a correspondent of the Times during the latter stages of the Mutiny. The Highlanders were instrumental in the British campaigns during the Indian Uprising, playing a major role in the Siege of Lucknow, when the British Residency there and its British and Indian inhabitants were besieged for several months by the sepoys. The siege began in June 1857, British reinforcements arrived in September, but fighting continued till the Residency was finally evacuated in November 1857. The siege later inspired Alfred Tennyson's 1879 poem The Defence of Lucknow, which also features the Highlanders. The Regimental Museum of the Highlanders houses several exhibits from the siege as symbols of their military triumph. These include gallantry medals such as the Victoria Cross awarded for the 'Relief of Lucknow', memoirs by soldiers who survived, military uniforms, paintings of British attacks and weaponry such as bayonets and swords. One of the exhibits is a letter by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson (who wrote Treasure Island and created Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) to Sergeant Forbes Mitchell expressing his sympathy and pride after reading the Sergeant's memoir on the Mutiny. The exhibits represent the power of British arms but are not beyond the troubling questions of the violence and exploitation experienced by the subjects of the Raj. How should an army acknowledge the effects and the implications of its actions? Can it commemorate its past in terms other than valour, sacrifice and an implied antipathy against the 'enemy'? Does it have an obligation to justify its actions, particularly when it fights for an empire – which, by its very nature, is an exploitative institution? In an age when war is consumed on prime-time television, how does an army, and more importantly, a society, make peace with war? In their 2018 book, East India Company at Home, 1757-1857, historians Margot Finn and Kate Smith argue that British material culture and even its built environment were profoundly influenced by objects and designs that originated in the colonies. This took place within a larger network of the exchange of people and objects in the wake of imperialism. The Stirling Castle reflects this due to its association with the English royal family, and can be considered a version of the English country house, which refers to mansions owned by aristocratic families in the English countryside. At the same time, the exhibits in the castle are material symbols of centuries of British political, military, cultural and commercial involvement through its empire in India. In Stirling, perhaps the most poignant of these symbols of the Uprising is a small piece of masonry from the Lucknow Residency kept beside a musket ball. While other objects such as uniforms, paintings and memoirs are attributed to individuals (the museum even has a flag seized from the 'rebels'), there is a haunting sense of emptiness, of the ruins of war, in that pale red fragment of a building (considerably faded with time) and the small black sphere, almost like a pebble, which represents many others like it that had killed hundreds of British and Indians alike. It is a fragment of Lucknow, a centre of Awadhi culture, which lives on behind a glass enclosure in a castle that was itself the site of centuries of bloody warfare between the Scots and the English. Sunset of the empire What conventional British history has termed the 'Sepoy Mutiny' has for long been known to Indians as the 'Indian Uprising' and even as an early struggle for independence. Another layer to this is that exhibits in Stirling are part of the collections of the British Army, situated in Scotland, which continues to debate if it wants independence from Britain. Museums across Britain are becoming increasingly conscious of the necessity of acknowledging uncomfortable aspects of British history such as slavery and imperialism. The Hunterian Museum, which is a part of the University of Glasgow, and the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, also in Glasgow, highlight the contribution of slavery and colonialism in the establishment of these institutions. No longer an empire on which the sun never sets, contemporary Britain (and the United Kingdom) finds itself having to acknowledge the violence that built the Raj at a time when 16% of the UK's population was born abroad. Even during the Mutiny, the Calcutta Review (a leading Anglo-Indian periodical) realised that the Siege of Lucknow would go down in history as a significant event, as much for the bloodshed as for its implications for the future of both Britain and India: 'when much that seems brightest to us has been blotted by time out of the book of history, the page which contains the defence of Lucknow will remain as clear as ever.' The author wishes to thank the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals for a travel grant, which allowed him to visit the UK. He also thanks Rod Mackenzie, the curator of the Argylls Museum, for permission to use the image of the exhibit.
