Beautifully written, wise, balanced, fair, funny and above all extremely original - William Dalrymple Dazzling - Niall Ferguson I found myself reading through the night. This is a rare gem of a book, one which so perfectly combines author and subject that it must set new standards for the future of historical biography Independent on Sunday A glorious biography, fair, frank and always interesting ... They don't come much more enjoyable than this - Jan Morris Independent Breathtakingly accomplished - Jonathan Keats Observer A charming biography which mingles travel with impressive research - Ian Thomson Sunday Times

Patrick French is a writer and historian, born in England in 1966. He is the author of Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer, which won the Somerset Maugham Award and the Royal Society of Literature W. H. Heinemann Prize, Liberty or Death: India's Journey to Independence and Division , which won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History of a Lost Land and, most recently, The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul, which was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Hawthornden Prize.