An Englishwoman in India Book

Harriet Tytler may look like a prim little Victorian lady in her photograph but she was anything but that. Most of her memoirs deal with the terrible months on Delhi Ridge during the Indian Mutiny but even when young she lived through wild adventures and experiences that maybe only a childhood in a military family in the India of the time could have provided and which seemed to have formed women of extraordinary strength of character and resilience. She was a loving mother to 10 children (8 of whom lived, against all odds), loyal and devoted wife and unflagging believer in the goodness of God - despite murder, massacres and mayhem all around her.

Political correctness warriors might take exception to her speaking of the “ignorant, gullible, idol-worshipping Hindus” and the “wily Mohammedans who but for this dreadful unChristlike religion would be splendid men in other respects” but India was her life and apart from several miserable years in England during her youth it was her home. She spoke fluent Hindustani, travelled widely, took invaluable photographs and met people from all strata of Indian society from the lowly sweeper to the King of Oudh. She survived 2 years on the hellish Andaman Islands and after her husband’s early death realised her life-long goal to build an orphanage and convalescent home for Indian children in Simla where she also wrote these vivid and fascinating reminiscences.