{"title":"Books by Charles Allen","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780349140117","title":"Coromandel","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eCOROMANDEL\u003c\/b\u003e. A name which has been long applied by Europeans to the Northern Tamil Country, or (more comprehensively) to the eastern coast of the Peninsula of India.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is the India highly acclaimed historian Charles Allen visits in this fascinating book. \u003ci\u003eCoromandel\u003c\/i\u003e journeys south, exploring the less well known, often neglected and very different history and identity of the pre-Aryan Dravidian south. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDuring Allen's exploration of the Indian south he meets local historians, gurus and politicians and with their help uncovers some extraordinary stories about the past. His sweeping narrative takes in the archaeology, religion, linguistics and anthropology of the region - and how these have influenced contemporary politics. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKnown for his vivid storytelling, for decades Allen has travelled the length and breadth of India, revealing the spirit of the sub-continent through its history and people. In \u003ci\u003eCoromandel\u003c\/i\u003e, he moves through modern-day India, discovering as much about the present as he does about the past.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56286122705269,"sku":"9780349140117","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780349140117_92eceacb-8c7e-46ed-8498-bca401a98023.jpg?v=1786013383"},{"product_id":"9780349118796","title":"God's Terrorists","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe brutal assasination of Commissioner Frederick Mackeson on British India's North-West Frontier in 1853 was a bloody and public declaration of a conflict that was to stretch well into the next one hundred and fifty years. The Wahhabi tribe, extreme Islamist fundamentalists, set out to restore purity to their faith by declaring violent jihad on all who opposed them. Their history has long been forgotten and yet their vicious brand of political ideology lives on. The Wahhabi deeply influenced not only the formation of modern Saudi Arabia, but Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. Their teachings educate orphan boys in Afghanistan and press rifles into their hands, for the sake of jihad.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe parallels between this pivotal terrorist network and our post-9\/11 political climate are staggering. Charles Allen sheds lights on  the historical roots of modern terrorism and shows how this dangerous nineteenth-century theology lives on today.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56286596727157,"sku":"9780349118796","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780349118796_0a5c618f-7203-4f82-bab1-8d2d61387f51.jpg?v=1786013880"},{"product_id":"9780349116853","title":"Kipling Sahib","description":"\u003cp\u003eRudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865 and spent his early years there, before being sent, aged six, to England, a desperately unhappy experience. Charles Allen's great-grandfather brought the sixteen-year-old Kipling out to Lahore to work on The Civil and Military Gazette with the words 'Kipling will do', and thus set young Rudyard on his literary course. And so it was that at the start of the cold weather of 1882 he stepped ashore at Bombay on 18 October 1882 - 'a prince entering his kingdom'. He stayed for seven years during which he wrote the work that established him as a popular and critical, sometimes controversial, success.\u003cbr\u003e     Charles Allen has written a brilliant account of those years - of an Indian childhood and coming of age, of abandonment in England, of family and Empire. He traces the Indian experiences of Kipling's parents, Lockwood and Alice and reveals what kind of culture the young writer was born into and then returned to when still a teenager.  It is a work of fantastic sympathy for a man - though not blind to Kipling's failings - and the country he loved.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56286858838389,"sku":"9780349116853","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780349116853_601844cc-5708-4b2f-b9f0-ccd594603dea.jpg?v=1786013840"},{"product_id":"9780349122380","title":"Ashoka","description":"\u003cp\u003eIndia's lost emperor Ashoka Maurya has a special place in history. In his quest to govern India by moral force alone he turned Buddhism from a minor sect into a world religion, and set up a new yardstick for government.  But Ashoka's bold experiment ended in tragedy and he was forgotten for almost two thousand years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this beautifully written, multi-layered journey Charles Allen describes how fragments of the Ashokan story were gradually discovered, pieced together by a variety of British Orientalists: antiquarians, archaeologists and epigraphists. In doing so, they did much to recover India's ancient history itself. The Lost Emperor tells the story of the man who was arguably the greatest ruler India has ever known.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56286884299125,"sku":"9780349122380","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780349122380_964745aa-6a64-4aa3-ac2a-dd7447b38ec9.jpg?v=1786013970"},{"product_id":"9780349104973","title":"Plain Tales From The Raj","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Raj was, for two hundred years, the jewel in the British imperial crown. Although founded on military expansionism and undoubted exploitation, it developed over the centuries into what has been called 'benign autocracy' - the government of many by few, with the active collaboration of most Indians in recognition of a desire for the advancement of their country.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCharles Allen's classic oral history of the period that marked the end of British rule was first published a generation ago. Now reissued as the imperial century closes, this brilliantly insightful and bestselling collection of reminiscences illustrates the unique experience of British India: the sadness and luxury for some; the joy and deprivation for others.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56286889935221,"sku":"9780349104973","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780349104973_2a974505-3982-4d81-9de6-17ff551e9b7a.jpg?v=1786013700"},{"product_id":"9780349139388","title":"A Mountain In Tibet","description":"\u003cp\u003eThroughout the East there runs a legend of a great mountain at the centre of the world, where four rivers have their source. Charles Allen traces this legend to Western Tibet where there stands Kailas, worshipped by Hindus and Buddhists alike as the home of their gods and the navel of the world. Close by are the sources of four mighty rivers: the sacred Ganges, the Indus, the Sutlej and Tsangpo-Brahmaputra.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor centuries Kailas remained an enigma to the outside world. Then a succession of remarkable men took up the challenge of penetrating the hostile, frozen wastelands beyond the Western Himalayas, culminating in the great age of discovery, the final years of the Victorian era.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eA Mountain in Tibet \u003c\/i\u003eis an extraordinary story of exploration and high adventure, full of the excitement and colour expected from the author of \u003ci\u003ePlain Tales from the Raj\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56287058067829,"sku":"9780349139388","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780349139388_947c9bd7-85af-402c-a39a-55b92f905eef.jpg?v=1786013362"},{"product_id":"9780719554285","title":"The Buddha and the Sahibs","description":"\u003cp\u003eToday there are many Buddhists in the West, but for 2000 years the Buddha's teachings were unknown outside Asia. It was not until the late 18th century, when Sir William Oriental Jones, a British judge in India, broke through the Brahmin's prohibition on learning their sacred language. Sanskrit, that clues about the origins of a religion quite distinct from Hinduism began to be deciphered from inscriptions on pillars and rocks.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis study tells the story of the search that followed, as evidence mounted that countries as diverse as Ceylon, Japan and Tibet shared a religion which had its origins in India yet was unknown there. British rule brought to India, Burma and Ceylon a whole band of enthusiastic Orientalist amateurs - soldiers, administrators and adventurers - intent on investigating the subcontinent's lost past. Unwittingly, these men helped lay the foundations for the revival of Buddhism in Asia during the 19th century and its spread to the West in the 20th. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCharles Allen's book is a mixture of detective work and story-telling, as this acknowledged master of British Indian history pieces together early Buddhist history to bring a handful of extraoridinary characters to life.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56296823619957,"sku":"9780719554285","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780719554285_267b28f2-c38f-4711-83f8-b0994af55360.jpg?v=1786014826"},{"product_id":"9781848547162","title":"Soldier Sahibs","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis text retells the story of a brotherhood of young men who together laid claim to one of the most notorious frontiers in the world: India's north-west frontier, which in the late 1990s forms the volatile boundary between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Known collectively as Henry Lawrence's Young Men, each had distinguished himself in the East India Company's wars in the Punjab in the 1840s before going out to carve out names for themselves as politicals on the frontier. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDrawing extensively on the men's diaries, journals and letters, Charles Allen weaves the individual stories of these Soldier Sahibs together with the tale of how they came together to save British India, ending climatically on Delhi Ridge in 1857.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56308602208629,"sku":"9781848547162","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781848547162_33d49cc1-b193-477a-b489-ac5ac11adc0d.jpg?v=1786029019"},{"product_id":"9789357312684","title":"Aryans","description":"Few themes in history have had as strong a hold on people's imagination. Fewer still have managed to alter the course of civilization. This is Charles Allen's definitive account of the Aryans, offering a grand sweep of language, mythology, contested histories and conflict. Spanning continents, cultures and societies: from the Russian steppe to the Indus valley, the Iliad to the Mahabharata, Greek to Sanskrit, Putin to Trump, and Müller to Vivekananda, Aryans astonishes with its scope. Allen, true to a style that has endeared him to a legion of admirers, weaves a narrative that is startling and illuminating. The product of a great investigation and meticulous scholarship, Aryans, Allen's last book, is his crowning achievement and marks the end of an illustrious career.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311015309685,"sku":"9789357312684","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9789357312684_cfdf23e9-bb95-4db9-8ad1-9b77ba2fab73.jpg?v=1786031815"},{"product_id":"9780349111421","title":"The Search For Shangri-La","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe idea of a hidden refuge, a paradise far from the stresses of modern life, has universal appeal. In 1932 the writer James Hilton coined the word 'Shangri-La' to describe such a place, when he gave that name to a hidden valley in the Himalayas in his novel LOST HORIZON.\u003cbr\u003eIn THE SEARCH FOR SHANGRI-LA acclaimed traveller and writer Charles Allen explores the myth behind the story. He tracks down the sources that Hilton drew upon in writing his popular romance, and then sets out to discover what lies behind the legend that inspired him. In the course of a lively and amusing account of his four journeys into Tibet, Allen also gives us a controversial new reading of the country's early history, shattering our notions of Tibet as a Buddhist paradise and restoring the mysterious pre-Buddhist religion of Bon to its rightful place in Tibetan culture. He also locates the lost kingdom of Shang-shung and, in doing so, the original Shangri-La itself: in an astounding gorge beyond the Himalayas, full of extraordinary ruins.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311710744949,"sku":"9780349111421","price":18.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780349111421_a372d3ac-2a01-4742-8c07-a4293b715c12.jpg?v=1786013757"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-charles-allen.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}