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“... holding back the US military’s technological capabilities.This complaint is also central to Raj Shah and Christopher Kirchhoff’s Unit X. Shah is a former fighter pilot who, while bombing Iraq in 2006, discovered that US air force jets lacked widely available and inexpensive GPS mapping ...”

“... explanation he pointed to a succession of four strong and long-lived rulers – Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb – and to the constant centralising tendency of Mughal rule. While creating and sustaining an empire of unparalleled strength and size, this centralising tendency steadily destroyed all autonomous sources of resistance and hence ...”

“... to be the nawab’s overlord (Nawab = ‘deputy’ or ‘viceroy’). Only after Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar was exiled to Rangoon after the Great Rebellion could there be said to be a vacancy on the imperial throne. Taylor records the occasional efforts of Indian potentates to appeal directly to the British sovereign. He mentions, for instance, the gifts ...”

“... sepoys of the Bengal Army crossed the River Jumna and called on the Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah to serve as their protector. Next, they turned their attention to the British civilians who clustered in the area around the church, slaughtering the firingis in their midst. Inside the church, the memory of those violent days vividly endures. Victorian ...”

“... both Tipu Sultan of Mysore, who stoutly resisted the British advance in the 1790s, and Wajid Ali Shah, the ruler of Awadh deposed by the British in the 1850s, were cultured and progressive leaders who might – had the white man never come – have led India to a less painful and more honourable compact with the modern world. Gott’s defence of Indian ...”

“... Until the fatwah, the secular Left had been reconsidering some of its positions on the anti-Shah revolution in Iran, and at about the time of the fatwah the secular Right had begun entertaining doubts about the sturdy, incorrigible Afghan mujahidin. Everywhere from the West Bank to Bradford those who once explained Islamic fury by easy reference to ...”

“... and caste Hindus – had gathered in the village square when a brahmin intervened: ‘Kill me first before you kill each other,’ he challenged them. To kill a brahmin is the sin of sins. First the untouchables backed down, then the caste Hindus. The nonviolent brahmin then counselled the untouchables to never again try anything that might provoke ...”

“... Army. You needed us then and we were very much loyal to you. Now you have abandoned us for India. Mr Clinton supports India, not human rights in Kashmir. Is this a good way to treat very old friends?’The Congressman made sympathetic noises, even promising to tick Clinton off for not being ‘more vigorous on human rights in Kashmir’. He needn’t have ...”

“... cousin), and with the Metcalfes also thrown in, Mount is able to weave more tales from the Raj into his book. We meet Richmond Shakespear, who went undercover in the first Afghan War in 1839, and later was an officer in the British armies that conquered Sind and the Punjab. We are taken to the heart of the Indian rebellion of 1857-58, where we find the ...”

“... sink of the world’s most precious metals’ – the converse of the complaint under the Raj that Britain was draining the wealth of India. Pliny also loathed the taste of pepper. Tacitus grumbled that ‘for promiscuous dress and the sake of jewels, our wealth is transported to alien and hostile countries.’ In economic terms, silk may have been no ...”

“... a few lines from the Sufi poets with gaiety in his voice, and occasionally he even laughed at my attempts at Punjabi double entendres. But this time his tone was sombre. ‘I’m going back.’ I was taken aback. There had been no hint of this in recent conversations. ‘Why?’ ‘To die.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Everyone has ...”

“... to enter a tea house or linger in a public square. A lot of ‘stuff’ happened between 1977 and my visit earlier this year to make Afghanistan regress even from the state in which Byron found it seventy years ago: meddling by the US and USSR in Afghanistan’s internal affairs; the Soviet invasion; the arming of insurgents in what President Carter’s ...”