Lucknow 1857 (Book 1 of India’s Historic Battles: A Series)-Rosie Llewelyn-Jones

Book: Lucknow 1857 (Book 1 of India’s Historic Battles: A Series)
Author: Rosie Llewelyn-Jones
Series Editor: Sqn Ldr Rana Chhina (Retd.)
Publisher: HarperCollins India

Have you heard about the Battle of Chinhat in 1857?

The city of Lucknow was the epicentre of the uprising of 1857. In Lucknow, 1857 - part of a new series of books on India's historic battles - historian Rosie Llewellyn-Jones examines the conflict in detail, from the British annexation of Awadh to the Indian response nad the subsequent revolt by sepoys. The defeat of a unit of the East India Company's army at Chinhat led immediately to the siege of the extensive British Residency in the heart of the city. Here, nearly 3,000 people - British, Indian and Anglo-Indian - held out for four and a half months. The winter saw huge defensive barricades being built around Lucknow, but with their superior firepower, the British recapture was the inevitable outcome. This richly illustrated field guide draws on Llewellyn-Jones's intimate knowledge of the city to paint a vivid picture of the events that unfolded in this historic urban battlefield.

Throughout the fight for independence, there have been uprisings across the country and there are some stories that only a handful of people know. This series explores all those stories and bring them to the forefront. Lucknow 1857 explores the series of events that took place from the Battle of Chinhat in June of 1857 to the recapture of Lucknow on March 1858. What I loved about the book is that it is a non-fiction history book, but it reads like a novel. The book is structured in a wonderful manner with the background, the commanders who were involved, the chronology of the events, and how everything unfolded during that period. The text is wonderfully supported with maps and photographs, both past and present which help you realise how things changed and places lost their essence as the fight went on. The research in the book is wonderfully done and I loved the small snippets of facts that make their way into the text which make the read even more intriguing.

If you like to read history and something that is told in an interesting manner, you can pick up this book. This one gets a 4.69/5 for me.

I got my copy at Faqirchand & Sons Bookstore in Delhi. The book is also available on Amazon India.