Book description
The tall, handsome Abdul Karim was just twenty-four years old when
he arrived in England from Agra to wait at tables during Queen
Victoria's Golden Jubilee. An assistant clerk at Agra Central Jail, he
suddenly found himself a personal attendant to the Empress of India
herself. Within a year, he was established as a powerful figure at
court, becoming the queen's teacher, or Munshi, and instructing her in
Urdu and Indian affairs. Devastated by the death of John Brown, her
Scottish ghillie, the queen had a last found his replacement. But her
intense and controversial relationship with the Munshi led to a
near-revolt in the royal household. Victoria & Abdul examines how
a young Indian Muslim came to play a central role at the heart of the
empire, and his influence over the queen at a time when independence
movements in the sub-continent were growing in force. Yet, at the
heart, it is a tender love story between an ordinary Indian and his
elderly queen, a relationship that survived the best attempts to
destroy it.
