A fast-moving, almost breezy journey through the twenty viceroys (the British Crown representative) in India from 1858 to 1947. While it provides a convenient summary of this period, I must say there is something disconcerting about the construction of many of the sentences, that may be due to a colloquial use of English, or to careless editing. It makes the reading of it rather taxing, which probably accounts for the inordinately long time spent on it. The author has some strong views on the persons involved, sometimes self-contradictory within the same paragraph or page, leaving the reader puzzled. Useful as a framework, but would have to be supplemented by more sober, more 'standard' biographies and historical accounts. ( )

This is a deeply disappointing book. The title is misleading, and the execution of the theme is quite sloppily done. Dealing with it in reverse order, I presume that Dr. Lee, is a fairly skilled lecturer, and has had his lecture notes cited edited for references, and spell checked. But he has not checked the text for a problem arising from being a better speaker than writer. Lee often has allowed sentences or rather, non-sentences to creep into his text, severely hampering his information flow. An example: "Mountbatten the man to do it." Lee has a weakness, omitting the verb "to be" in a written sentence. It is highly effective in speaking but not in written speech. An adequate editor would have helped him correct this, I hope. Into the bargain he does not use the semicolon; a punctuation mark that links two ideas in equal partnership in a sentence, rather than the word "And". What Lee relies on is the verbal trick of emphasis, but it requires the sentence to be read aloud rather than silently, usually several times,slowing down the flow. I raise these points as I also suffer from them, and I feel his temptations, and his pain.
The work starts with a potted history of "India before the Mutiny,' from the British point of view. It is readable, and definitely a recap rather than an account, for there' s often a frustrating lack of detail. This lack of detail persists in the descriptions of the Viceroys, who are all linked to their educational backgrounds but often not linked to their accomplishments. While they are linked to their social roles in the government of India, one is often left at loose ends as to how they actually worked, and what demands were made on them by their office. As a tool in discovering how India was moved from a medieval plundering empire to a modern parliamentary state by the British run period...the book disappoints. I would however give Mr. Lee credit for his work in two areas: his essay on the history of Jinnah, usually portrayed as a simple Islamic villain in the partition controversy, and Lee's essay on the Wavell/Mountbatten windup of the whole show. These two, at least, are useful to the student. ( )