The Golden Oriole

Using family reminiscences and papers, this volume documents the author's experiences in the Indian world, interweaving history, memoir, and travel in treating the inextricable presence of the English in India's history ad culutre

Among the best-known members of the Trevelyan family, which served in India for nearly 200 years, the most prominent were the great Whig historian Macaulay and Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan, founder of the modern Indian civil service. Less famous is 64-year-old Raleigh. Born in the Andaman Islands and raised in Gilgit in the mountainous northwest, he was sent to England when he was eight and eventually became a publisher and prolific author. Interspersed here among his five travel journals, which depict his searches throughout India for evidences of his family's lives and exploits, are letters, papers and reminiscences of his eminent and less distinguished forebears, as well as of Thackeray and E. M. Forster. High points are descriptions of the Mutiny of 1857, the Amritsar massacre of 1919 and his father's experiences as a military man. Many of the tourist vignettes have little relevance to the story of the Trevelyans or of colonial India, yet there are interesting details of life under the Raj. This overlong hodgepodge is certainly kaleidoscopic, bloody and colorful, but neither charming nor masterful. Photos. History Book Club alternate.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Macauley and Trevelyan families marked deeply the 19th- and 20th-century history of British India. The Golden Oriole traces the history of the two families through five contemporary journeys made by the author, a descendant of both families. Amidst personal visits to Gilgit, Kabul, Calcutta, Madras, and Cawnpore, Trevelyan skillfully uses flashbacks to present his own memories and those of others or to provide a narrative history capturing a uniquely interesting political and social glimpse of British India. Trevelyan's transitions are easily followed and his choice of detail is evocative. He makes considerable use of unpublished diaries, memoirs, and letters, which provide a sense of intimacy and immediacy, giving the work great charm. John F. Riddick, Central Michigan Univ. Lib., Mt. Pleasant
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.