There is so much to admire in this book the depth of historical research, the finely evocative writing, the extraordinary rapport with the cultural world of late Mughal India ...A remarkably humane and egalitarian history...[and] a splendid work of empathetic scholarship' David Arnold.

WINNER OF THE DUFF COOPER MEMORIAL PRIZE In Rangoon in November 1862, an anonymous coflqn is buried in eerie silence, and the turf carefully replaced to disguise the spot. So ended the life of Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the last of the Great Mughals. Zafar was a remarkable poet who turned Delhi into a city of cultural brilliance and learning. But in 1857 his capital became the centre of the greatest anticolonial uprising in history, which on defeat was reduced to a battered,empty ruin. Award-winning historian William Dalrymple has written a powerful masterpiece of narrative history, the first to present the Indian perspective on the Indian Mutiny of 1857 - the Raj's Stalingrad.THE LAST MUGHAL has at its heart the story of the doomed Mughal capital, its tragic ruler, and the individuals caught up in one of the bloodiest upheavals in history.

List of Illustrations

Maps

Dramatis Personae

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 A Chessboard King

2 Believers and Infidels

3 An Uneasy Equilibrium

4 The Near Approach of the Storm

5 The Sword of the Lord of Fury

6 This Day of Ruin and Riot

7 A Precarious Position

8 Blood for Blood

9 The Turn of the Tide

10 To Shoot Every Soul

11 The City of the Dead

12 The Last of the Great Mughals

Glossary

Notes

Bibliography

Index