100 Years Ago

HINDOO Holiday - An Indian Journal is a former army captain's account of a five-month spell as secretary to a maharajah in the mid-1920s.

The book thinly disguises the maharajah, his servants and the British residents, but they were easily identified when the book was published in 1932.

A vanished world

Nothing much really happens, but the tales are charming, or "radiantly delightful," as Evelyn Waugh put it, provided you can stomach the overt pederasty.