PositiveThe Spectator (UK)Well written and researched ... There are many, many characters — a cast list of almost 100 — and occasionally the thrust of the story is lost in detail. Having said that, it is a gripping tale.
Francesca Cartier Brickell
PositiveSpectatorLike many American books, it’s too long for its subject, being packed with the sort of obscure detail fascinating to family members but less enthralling to others ... Having said that, the story of the family’s rise from simple artisans to originators, creators, super salesmen and friends to the rich and famous is extraordinary.
Cecelia Tichi
MixedThe Wall Street JournalOccasionally the exhaustive list of details reads like a catalog, as we are told what the interiors of elevators looked like, and how the washrooms in private train cars or the drawing room of a Vanderbilt yacht were furnished ... Ms. Tichi offers some good personality descriptions, but overall her approach resembles that of a scientist writing about dissecting aliens (which wouldn’t be a gross mischaracterization in some of these cases). What is lacking is a sense of life and, particularly, of the bitter struggle required to scale the barricades hedging Mrs. Astor’s set and, once inside, to keep one’s place.
David Gilmour
RaveThe Telegraph (UK)\"...he gives us just about everything one has ever heard of, or would wish to know, about the British in India, from what these expatriates ate–anglicised curries and kedgeree, with chicken as a backstop–to their painful separation from their children, who were sent \'home\' to school at the age of five. Superbly researched, The British in India is authoritative and comprehensive ... Gilmour captures this peculiar existence in elegant prose and superbly evocative photographs.\
