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A review by graculus
Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary by Anita Anand
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
I don't read all that much non-fiction but occasionally I find myself picking up something I think might be of interest, so Sophia appealed to me when I found it on my local library's e-book system.
Sophia is the story of Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, one of the daughters of the deposed king of the Punjab, who was Queen Victoria's goddaughter and brought up in the UK after her father's throne was taken from him by the British Raj when he was a child. I realised early on that some of the story was familiar and this is from reading another book. Early on, I realised that some of the story was more familiar than I expected and that's due to my having read The Maharajah's Box by Christy Campbell, which is a book about Duleep Singh himself.
Unlike her father, who was (understandably, you might say) obsessed with the return of his throne and the wrongs done to him by the British government, Sophia Duleep Singh ended up throwing herself into politics and working for the betterment of others. This meant first, the welfare of Indian sailors in the UK and then a long period of time supporting the suffragette movement. I knew a bit about her involvement with the latter cause but nothing about the former - unfortunately, the author either couldn't find more information than was mentioned or wasn't as interested in it. The most interesting period for me, as I didn't know anything like as much about it, was Sophia's involvement in Indian politics - an odd contrast, the child of a line of hereditary monarchs fighting for the independence of a nation which no longer had a space for her.
Interestingly, there are a couple of different covers for this book and the main one seems to use a 'glamour shot' of Sophia herself - far more interesting, in my opinion, is the one of her bundled up in a big coat selling suffragette newspapers at the gate of Hampton Court Palace, where she lived for a large chunk of her life.
Sophia is the story of Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, one of the daughters of the deposed king of the Punjab, who was Queen Victoria's goddaughter and brought up in the UK after her father's throne was taken from him by the British Raj when he was a child. I realised early on that some of the story was familiar and this is from reading another book. Early on, I realised that some of the story was more familiar than I expected and that's due to my having read The Maharajah's Box by Christy Campbell, which is a book about Duleep Singh himself.
Unlike her father, who was (understandably, you might say) obsessed with the return of his throne and the wrongs done to him by the British government, Sophia Duleep Singh ended up throwing herself into politics and working for the betterment of others. This meant first, the welfare of Indian sailors in the UK and then a long period of time supporting the suffragette movement. I knew a bit about her involvement with the latter cause but nothing about the former - unfortunately, the author either couldn't find more information than was mentioned or wasn't as interested in it. The most interesting period for me, as I didn't know anything like as much about it, was Sophia's involvement in Indian politics - an odd contrast, the child of a line of hereditary monarchs fighting for the independence of a nation which no longer had a space for her.
Interestingly, there are a couple of different covers for this book and the main one seems to use a 'glamour shot' of Sophia herself - far more interesting, in my opinion, is the one of her bundled up in a big coat selling suffragette newspapers at the gate of Hampton Court Palace, where she lived for a large chunk of her life.