This book won the J. R. Ackerley prize for Out of India in 2002.

Born in India in 1937, Michael Foss's childhood was spent between the cold, grey austerity of Britain under threat, and the brightly lit and teeming vitality of wartime India. Here, beautifully evoked, is a childhood spent amongst grudging and unloving English relations; a sufferance of cruelly harsh schooling, a bleak, dank landscape; and a sense of permanent cold and a savage hunger even for dreadful food. All of this was suddenly changed for the sub-continent's jumble of conflicting sights and sounds and smells: the vital, stinking, hot, noisy, crowded streets; the calm, quiet grace of moghul architecture; the ancient Hindu kingdoms reduced to stones amid the roots of trees; the monumental Victorian buildings that echoed British power; the attitudes of the Raj; the self-conscious majesty and pomp.

Michael Foss was born in India in 1937 and educated in England and America. He has travelled widely and, after a spell as a lecturer at an American university, he settled in London and took up writing full time. His books include Out of India, The Road Taken, Looking for the Last Big Tree, Tudor Lives, The Founding of the Jesuits, Undreamed Shores, On Tour: The British Traveller in Europe, Poetry of the World Wars, Gods and Heroes: The Story of Greek Mythology, The World of Camelot, Celtic Myths and Legends and People of the First Crusade. He won the J. R. Ackerley prize for Out of India in 2002.