Tuesday, Mar 17, 2015

Imagining British India 170 Years Ago - The Cunning Man

Peter Stanley in Conversation
with Claudia Hyles

Professor Peter Stanley of UNSW Canberra is well known as an author in the field of Australian military-social history – most of his 26 books deal with the Australian experience of war. But Peter has also written more broadly – about the history of surgery, battlefield research, a community’s experience of bushfire, and also about the military social history of British India. He also writes more than historical non-fiction, and recently Bobby Graham Publishing of Canberra released his novel The Cunning Man

A ‘mystery-cum-romance’, The Cunning Man begins in the Punjab in the opening days of the first Anglo-Sikh war, and the developing conflict forms the backdrop for the plot, which involves a Sergeant major of the East India Company’s Bengal Horse Artillery pursuing both a supposed conspiracy against the British army on the eve of battle with the powerful Sikh Khalsa and Julia Bracken, his unrequited love. The action culminates on the field of bloody battle of Feroz’Shah, when all becomes clear.

Peter will join in conversation Claudia Hyles, a Canberra writer and reviewer with a great interest in South Asia. She and Peter will discuss how we can imagine ourselves into the world of the Bengal Army in the 1840s, and into the lives, minds and emotions of an army whose members left so few traces of their Indian service.

Do not miss what is sure to be an entertaining and insightful evening.

When: 6pm Tuesday March 17, 2015

Where: Asia Bookroom, Unit 2, 1 - 3 Lawry Place, Macquarie. ACT

RSVP: By March 16, either by phoning 6251 5191 or Email Us

Admission by gold coin donation to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation

If you can't join us on March 17th and would like to buy a signed copy of Peter Stanley' The Cunning Man, email us and we will organise this for you.