title: 12. Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary
author: Empire
contenttype: podcast
publication: Empire
published: 2022-10-10T21:00:00-04:00
sourceurl: https://pdst.fm/e/chrt.fm/track/A27C8C/traffic.megaphone.fm/NSR5813776823.mp3?updated=1703674527
word_count: 11867
If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of MPa a chat community discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter sign up to MPa Club at www.mpaPoduk.com Well hello and welcome to MPa with me William Durinple I don't need any comments, I don't know why we do it the other way around That was the longest pause ever but I won't get on your face. I won't get on your case. Anyway today we have a particularly tricky guest, the wonderful Anita Arnold. She's awful. She's written a very good book. I'm not much more of a tug. She's written a very good book. It's very severe. Sophia Sophia but you call her. Sophia. Sophia Princess. Sophia. She would have called herself Sophia. Princess suffragette. Revolutionary. And it is, I have to say, one of those stories that as a nonfiction writer when you see that somebody else has written it, you do suffer a little surge of envy because it's kind of a perfect story. It's an astonishingly good story. It takes our old friend the Koei Nō which is why we're doing it now. Almost as a sort of epilogue to our quartet of Koei Nō episodes. It has Ranjit Singh, Do Lip Singh but it has also a whole new world of people, the link, the astonishing world of the Seek Court and the Seek Wars and all that sort of extraordinarily exotic stuff happening in 1840s India. With the new world, she is a suffragette. She meets Gandhi. She is part of the freedom struggle. She's facing off against Churchill. So it's an extraordinary link between two worlds that seem sort of unbridgeable and yet her life brings them together. Oh, are you loving? Are you loving? I was honestly, I had fast in my seatbelt and I'd put on my crash helmet for that introduction. I got off quite well. How nice of you. A very learned and respected critic put it this way after the book came out saying, you madam are a lucky, lucky cow. That's not nice to come across a story like that very first book and I'll wear that. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll definitely book about it before I was just literally one that you dug up from. No, no. It was entirely born out of frustration. So the whole story of this book is I mean, you know my long suffering has been very well. It was while I was on maternity leave and there was yes, I wonderful long ease. That's a very wonderful man. But during maternity leave, what happened was I was sort of trying to be very quiet. I can't imagine you ever be very quiet. It was my one and very short live trappist silence phase. So I just turned off all radius and TVs and I just read everything. That was everything, anything and everything. So which included sort of the kind of male and local magazines and things that would have come straight into the dustbin. And so it was one of these days when I was looking through a local magazine and it's had suffragette sending newspaper outside Hampton Court. And even though it was a seepier print, there was something about the picture that told me this woman, the suffragette selling the newspaper of the suffragette, the suffragette revolution on the on the sandwich board next to it was what was Indian. We're even more that was Punjabi. I mean, kind of Gator. I always say this when I do the talk. We have Punjabi. We can tell another one from space. So that's what started it really. I started trying to find out more about it and then board my husband, Richard. And he said, just write it down. I'm actually looking at the picture this minute, which is now, of course, on the cover of your paperback. And it does indeed show this woman in a very expensive fur coat. So she's not poor, wearing a very fashionable turned up sort of 1910 era hat. And she's standing by a poster board for the suffragette in huge block capitals. And the one word banner headline that you'd associate more with some sort of tabloid from today, but it just says revolution explanation about, but this woman who's who's clearly well off and is supporting the suffragette cause is very clearly, as you say, an Indian face. It's a classic North Indian face. And very beautiful actually. And she's and very striking. And you're right. These are two words which sort of two words which you wouldn't expect to come together. So what did you do to when you were researching this? How did you put it together? So I did, you know, being a journalist, I always take the the path of greatest laziness. Who's this then? You know, who'd that? And they literally there wasn't even a caption. Well, I mean, if it is, no, I mean, I might be in my sort of sleep deprived, the fuddle, you know, state, I didn't catch it. But they said, oh, it's Sophia Deliep saying, I said, can you tell me anything about her? And they said, what's Sophia Deliep saying from Hampton Court is what we can tell you? I thought, this is really crazy. I guess I mean, making it worse. I'm a political journalist making it worse, worse, worse. It's my husband is a thing. And I'm now a thing. So how do I not know about this woman? So I try to find a book because that's what a, you know, typically lazy journalist would do. And there wasn't, there just wasn't one. So then I did, I started researching this story as I would a contemporary story. I thought, I can't look for cuttings. And I very quickly found that there were two piles of cuttings which bore no resemblance to each other. And they seem to be talking about a different person. So on the one side, there were cuttings about this beautiful society princess and everything she wore was fashionable and where she bought her jewels and where how she did her hair and things like that. And on the other side, Harrodon Princess, Trader's daughter, you know, ungrateful immigrant. And I thought, how are these two the same person? And that started the obsession. And it is, and it is in a sense that conflict that that animates the book is the charge that keeps the thing going because she does indeed embrace completely different worlds to utterly different worlds that you'd never imagine coming together in one life. So let's go back to her dad who we've covered a little bit before in our, in our, a, Koenor episode. But in case the listeners have not heard that, who was her dad do lip thing? So her father do lip thing was the beautiful boy king who Queen Victoria becomes obsessed with. He is dispossessed of his kingdom and of his Koenor diamond by Lord Del Haasie who wants the diamond. He wants to have this, this experience of not only just taking the lucrative north of India, but presenting on this cushion, the diamond that represents India to Queen Victoria. And in the process of doing that, this little boy is expelled from Punjab. And he's given to the foster care of a Scottish couple called the Logan's. He decides he wants to meet the Maharani of the world at one point. And Queen Victoria really very much wants to meet him because she keeps getting updates about how beautiful and wonderful and Christian he is. So he embraces Christianity as well. And by doing so really upsets, he's already heartbroken people in Punjab. So he's the kind of model Victorian prince. He's absolutely poster boy for what the British would like the Indian princes to be. Picture-esque, gorgeous, exotic, and deeply loyal. And for Victorian, even more than that, somebody who is deeply Christian, he's a gateway to the Christianisation of India. His soul is saved and maybe everybody else's soul can be saved in the same way. So there are many reasons that she's interested in him. But when he comes to England, he is completely swept up in the royal family. He feels apart, a member of that family. And it's only when he gets older, when he starts to think of the family of his own. And he realizes that he cannot actually live like his best friend, Bertie. And he can't spend the money that the prince of Wales is spending. And he can't leave to his children what he feels he ought to be able to to leave. Then he starts looking into the past and looking into how he was separated from his mother and forced to sign this treaty, which signed everything over. And then he becomes this implacable enemy. Just before we go there to that, in a sense, that divorce to the moment that he turns against the royal family and begins to want to reclaim his lost kingdom. Just describe to me because I remember you talking about this when you first came across the the papers, the Queen and he sketching each other. Was it in the Isle of White? Oh, they're lovely. Yes, absolutely. So yeah, no. And this is a really controversial thing to say in India because in India, this is a really simple, straightforward binary story of a rapacious queen who takes everything from this poor Indian child. The truth is always more complicated than that. So when Deliep first comes to England, just bear in mind he's been separated from his mother since he was an infant. He has no family around him. And he's swept up in this royal family and taken into the bosom of the family, which means he often spends time at Osborne House, which is the the inner sanctum for Queen Victoria and Al, but it's where they get away from everybody. And so it's it's while they are there that this absolute love affair. And it's not it's not a sexual love affair, but it is a real love develops. The two of them spend ages. You're quite right sitting and looking at each other and sketching each other and these very tender portraits still exist in the royal collection. You can go and see them yourself. Here's impact on Victoria is even today evident because you'll see this resplendent picture, this this portrait that was painted by Winterhalter, which hangs off Deliep saying despite everything, despite this whole detonation of their relationship later, which still hangs in Osborne House. She writes in her diary about her sweeties to her younger son, Leopold, who has hemophilia and is really picked on by the other royal kids, but Deliep always sort of scoops him up and puts him on his shoulders. So there is a real tenderness, which then explains why when he does start thinking of his own, first of all she tries to arrange his marriage. I don't know if I mentioned that in the last time that we touched on Deliep saying, but Queen Victoria tries to do exactly what his mother would have done in India, which is trying to find him or why. And who does she want him to marry? Well, she has another interest, who is Princess Garamma of Kurg, who is also the child of an Indian, dispossessed Indian royal, who has converted Christianity. I mean, in that case her father sort of converts himself and converts her as an attempt to hang onto his kingdom. And she's from Kurg in southern India. Exactly right. And it's very beautiful, very beautiful little thing. South of modern Bangalore up in the mountains. Exactly, beloved by her father, but it's sort of given over almost as a gift to Queen Victoria that this is how much I trust you. And I think you're going to do right by me and my kingdom, take my daughter, and she's your godchild for now. And so this is a godchild to Queen Victoria. And she grows up in Britain, and she's quite flyty. She's quite a silly giggly little thing. And when Deliep is first in treatise, and is also a great beauty like Deliep. With this ambition Queen Victoria has the beautiful. And is also a great beauty like Deliep. Yeah, very pretty, a little big doe eyes, big brown doe eyes. I mean, they do, you know, they would, they would have had beautiful babies, they would have, this would have worked. It would have been a beautiful thing. But it didn't work because he found her too flyty and too ridiculous. And also, I think, you know, he was having affairs at this time, even at this time as a young man with women in court who were desperately glamorous and wildly. But he thought it was fine to flirt and have affairs. But my god, they wouldn't marry him because they didn't know anybody wanted mongrel children. And again, just just before we plunge into the into the descent, at his peak, he's not only very close to the royal family, he's got this enormous estate in Suffolk, Elviden. Yes, yes, it's right on the Norfolk Suffolk borders. If anyone's been to Thetford, that's sort of still the most identifiable place on the map. And it is a crazy, it's crazy town at Elviden. So he buys it because he wants to be near Sandringham. He, the Prince of Wales has just recently bought Sandringham. And anything but you can do, Deliep can do better. There is this kind of brotherly rivalry between them. So he buys this house that used to belong to Admiral Kepple. That's my mother's family. You have said this before that you're related to everyone including God. Right. So the Kepple house is in Thetford as it was. Was this quite austere, looked like Sandringham, you know, sort of a very big, blocky you know, house of substance and seriousness? And he buys it and then he completely rakes it and rebuild it. In a sort of, in a sort of mucle style. There's mucle rooms isn't there? Yeah. Yeah, on the outside Italian, inside it is like a mucle palace. I mean, there are first and there are skins and there is gold and there is shisha work, mirror work on all the walls. What is, what is most extraordinary, there's the wildlife that he keeps outside in the grounds of Elviden. So he has the Boons. He has these exotic birds that are flown over every year. Oh, by Boons chained up in the flowerbeds who are miserable and hate the, you know, local, there's a wall that's going on that I found in a local newspaper between the Baboon and the local Jack door, which was sufficiently noisy that they wrote about it in their local fabric. But then there's also, you know, these parrots that he just keeps shipping over every year, which drop out of the sky like right pairs and he just ships in more because he's made this pleasure palace. He has a leopard pen outside the children's nursery. So they wake up to this sort of, you know, the strange noises of wild animals and that they grow up at this place. He's also made the premier hunting estate in England. So, you know, the thing that the aristocracy loved to do more than anything in those times was get the biggest bag, you know, sort of bang things out of the sky. And Suffolk and Norfolk was very much the big shoot HQ, was there? There's extraordinary shoots of the Victorian period when thousands of birds would be brought down. And he's one of the best shots in the country. And you are literally talking about bags of thousands of birds, you know, sort of a hunting party. He himself could bring down 900 birds in, you know, a one-day's outing. It's their ludicrous eye-waltering numbers, his hunting statistics. But, you know, replenishing all of this and keeping this kind of lifestyle so that the dukes and the duchesses and the prince of Wales, you know, is a regular guest at Elvden. To keep up to that level, he keeps spending money that he thinks is his. He thinks that there is a settlement, an equitable settlement that's been made when he signed everything over, where he can carry on living like Maharaja, but very soon the bank coots in this instance, starts returning his his bills saying we're not going to we're not paying this. You haven't got the money, we're not paying this. So you go to the secretary of state for India saying hang on a minute, but we agreed that you would let me live this lifestyle and they said, well, don't know who agreed that, your majesty, but no. And so that sells the relation. So you begin to have to sell things off, or how does it how does it play out? He starts actually upping the ante. So he starts being even more profligate and spending even more money and sending the bills daring them to give, you know, to to bankrupt him. And when it becomes clear that they really are going to bankrupt him, he then appeals to Queen Victoria and says, look, you've got to help me. This is this is crazy. Why am I being punished? I've been your most loyal servant. I've done everything that was expected of me. And also I was abused by your people as a child, you know, this is not this is not legal. What happened? This document cannot even be legal because I signed it as a minor and you've taken my mother away and who did I have to cancel me? And all of this falls on some some rather deaf ears. I mean, Queen Victoria says, you know, I do feel sorry for your predicament. She writes to others saying, it is a shame. It's a shame. What's happened? But she's like, I'm not going to do anything. I cannot cross my government. This is, you know, you've made this bed. Now you lie in it. So he then decides, right, if you're going to play like this, then I'm going to play nasty too. And he formulates this plan, which on paper will it makes perfect sense. You know, this is the time of the great game, as you know. So Russia is flexing like crazy. So he thinks, okay, you know what? I will go back. I will go back to India. The Sikhs will rise up for me and the Zah will come in on the other side and we will pincer the British out of the north of India. And it's going to work. And that's his thought process when he drags his poor wife who we haven't spoken about yet, who's also an extraordinary story, but his wife and his six little children on a voyage, a doomed voyage back to India, he sells everything in Elvadin to pay for this, including the Feson eggs. I've seen receipts for the Feson eggs that he sells to raise enough money to go back and start this war against Britain. So how far does he get? He gets as far as Aiden. He gets as far as the Suez Canal. And then he is pulled off the boat and his family is pulled off the boat by a sweating resident who doesn't know what to do with them because he still has royal status. You know, he's really famous. He's in all that everyone knows who he is. He's in newspapers. He's an imperial portrait, which is still hanging galleries in this country. He is a friend of the Queen. And yet he's pulled off and he's looking for guidance. What shall I do? And they just say just keep him till he calls down. And that is very much the director coming from Queen Victoria. He needs to see sense and live within his means and just tend to cool down, that he doesn't cool down. So he's held in this place in Aiden. He is getting angrier and angrier and ratcheting up. His family are desperate. His poor wife who is just such an extraordinary creature. She shouldn't be living this life. Bamboo mule. So he so while if we just sort of for one second look back and I'm apologising if this is confusing, we're just previously on this conversation. I mentioned and we just have to look at Bamboo for a moment. Bamboo is not a royal blood. Bamboo is a lot younger than him. And Bamboo has been married to him because he's turned down all of the arranged marriages that Queen Victoria set before him. He's not interested in any of them. And at some point he starts to feel quite anxious out of place, disjointed and rejected by all these women who were flirt and have affairs with him but won't marry him. So he starts to look for somebody who will be as much of an outsider in the court as he feels. And to do that. But he also wants a pure virgin because he's clearly reviling everything that's gone on the people that he thought he loved and thought they loved him. So he wants a complete opposite. So he goes to this mission in Cairo. And he asks them quite point blank. He says, do you have a girl? I can marry. She has to be a virgin. She has to be pure. She has to be unwildly. And they say we've got just the girl. And it is a young girl that illegitimate child get this. I mean, you know, extraordinary story. If you presented this as fiction back in the day, they would have turned it down. So she is the daughter, the illegitimate daughter of a rich German merchant, Hermula and an Abyssinian slave who has a baby and instead of acknowledging the child. I mean, it's straight out of right to Haggard or something. Isn't it? Isn't it? And he just leaves the daughter in this cloister to be brought up by the mission. And so they have this pure, pure girl in Bamba who is so beautiful. I mean, that is the one thing again. She's again big brown eyes, huge eyelashes, round face, absolutely clear expression, completely guile this. And he meets her. She doesn't speak any English. He speaks no Arabic. They have to have a translator at their wedding. They meet once and he decides, yes, he's going to have her because she's a very impressive trinket. And also it's going to slightly get up the nose of Queen Victoria. And Queen Victoria to her credit when he comes back and goes, da da! This is my wife. This is me who's a word of your language. But this is my wife who I chose all by myself. She embraces Bamba as well. She sort of sees Bamba as a really pious, lovely girl who should be protected. And he goes through this wild phase of sort of treating her literally like a trophy wife. She has to learn English haltingly to even communicate with her husband. But what he does is sort of even to me, even worse. He uses her almost like a mannequin. He starts designing her clothes for her. And he designs her outfit. She wears fashions. No one has ever seen in the world because they're a mixture of East, West. And there are ladies in waiting to Queen Victoria going, what the hell is he doing to that poor girl? Just leave her alone. And she is also permanently pregnant. He has seven children, one of whom dies in inficiency. But she's almost permanently pregnant to this point where, now if we can flip forward to Aden, she has now got these young children in her house. So we have a pile of trunks, some young children, and do lip-syncing, sitting in the residency, the British residency in Aden, unable to continue his journey to India. What happens next? No, can't go forward. Won't go back. And won't go back. That's the thing. He can go back to England. He's invited to go back to England if he signs a paper saying he's going to behave himself. But he won't. And his youngest daughter, who this is her first arrest of age nine, is sort of sitting there sweating in this heat, in this place that's not designed for children for such a long time, until Bamber can't take it anymore. And she says, look please, for the children, can we do something? Just can we do something for the children at least? I've pity. And he says, get out you and them, just get out my sight, because I am now the implacable enemy of the British and I've got no room for you. So this is, again, people who suffer trauma in childhood or, you know, can be its possibility, you know, psychologists say they can, if it's a life unexamined, revisit those things on others. And that's perhaps what happens. You know, he is a man who's been ripped away from his mother. He therefore has a really odd idea of how you treasure people who love you. And he treats them so apparently. And of course, I'm not saying that's the rule, but, you know, there are some may say mitigations to his behavior. Because otherwise, how do you explain a man who just ejects his wife and these poor little children sends them back? And he sends them back with an article that he puts in the newspapers saying, extend no credit to this family because I have no relations with Britain anymore. I am their enemy. I don't want to penny from you. And just, you know, they don't speak for me. So it's such a... That's a story. Does Sophia ever see her public? She will, but it will be under the most wretched circumstances. But, you know, there she is. She sent back with her two sisters. She has two older sisters at Bamber named after their mother, Catherine and two brothers as well, Victor and Freddie, who they're all sort of now at the mercy of the British state, whatever, whatever Victoria decides to do. Sophia is Victoria's goddaughter. And this is 1886, 1887? Yeah. So Victoria decides to step in and look after, you know, this child because she owes it. And the whole family, she does like Marrani Bamber. She, you know, she thinks she's this good and pious woman. So she puts them up first of all in the the best refugee colony ever thought of. Clarities for a while. So they, they've put up in Clarities for ages. Until she then says, okay, there must be a ward. They must be made wards. And they must be looked after. And she puts them in the care of one of her equaries, Colonel Olophant, who then looks after this family, but also spies on them regularly to see what kind of treacherous stuff did he might be saying and sending back to the family. But Bamber, Marrani Bamber, the mother of Sophia is so desperately broken by what has happened that she turns into an alcoholic. And she's drinking herself to death in Brighton under the gaze of the Olophant, who can do nothing about it. And the children are growing up feral. So they're all of these reports from Olophant to Queen Victoria saying, you know, okay, delieves out of the picture. He barely talks to his children. I mean, Victor has reached out a few times, but it's not really, you know, there's not really a connection at all. Two of the children are very anti-British and vocally so Sophia's elder sister, Bamber, who now openly refers to Queen Victoria, just as her father did as Mrs. Fagan, the receiver is Stolen Goods, Catherine, who cannot stand the British, and then little Sophia, who there is some hope for. So that's where they live with poor old Marrani Bamber in Sensei with alcohol most of the time, just trying to numb the pain. And so, you know, it's only months later where Sophia is, you know, just only been back for a little while, and she gets terrible typhus fever, which is the same thing that actually sweeps Prince Albert away eventually. But she is desperately sick, and they don't think she's going to make it. And Marrani Bamber, for the first time, sort of, you know, that feeling of being a mother, it's obviously with her, but she's just incapable of doing anything about it. But she sits all night by her little daughter's bed on her knees, praying to the Lord to spare her daughter. And when in the morning, Sophia opens her eyes, her fever is broken, but her mother's lying dead on the floor. She dies in the night while praying all night to save her. So she's often effectively aged 10. Yeah, just completely with in the world to look out for her, look after her. Yeah. Apart from Queen Victoria and the Oliphance, who her sisters can't stand, by the way, her sisters despise the Oliphance. They think that they're spying on them. Queue Victoria then steps in and gives them a grace and favour, flat and hamptored court. Well, that comes, that comes a little bit later. At first she steps in because the Oliphance report back that these three girls in particular, and Sophia, who is sweet of nature, unlike the other two, who they describe as being awful. But Sophia's sweet, but they have no ability because their mother has been so absent from their life and given them so little training. They don't know how to eat. They don't know how to hold knives and forks. They don't know how to dress properly. They've been running around wildly, sort of bringing themselves up. So Queue Victoria steps in for Sophia. She sends her dolls which are dressed properly and T-sets to show, so through play she can learn how to be a lady. And Sons Tutors to bring these girls out properly. It might be a bit late for the older two who are really wild spirited according to the Oliphance letters, but at least for her, send somebody to look after them. And one of the Tutors that they send from the palace is a German woman who eventually will become the lover of Catherine and they will have a glorious lifelong love affair and completely duck out of the British system altogether. This storyline goes all sorts of places you don't expect it. I think we probably, that sort of lesbian sort of diversion from the way things probably quite a good moment to take a break. Yes. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop leaning around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate seat. According to Indeed data, Sponsored Jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 Sponsored Job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast, Terms and Conditions Apply. So welcome back to Empire with me, William Droomple. And me and Eita Annan. Just to recap, what's happened to Do Lip Singh at this point? He's not me last saw him in Aida, where's he gone? Oh, it all just goes completely wrong for him. So he won't go back to Britain. He's completely washed his hands of his family. He ends up in France for a bit where he immediately falls into a ring of British spies who disabuse him with his wallet, his means, his money, and they put a tracker on him. They have somebody sort of cozy up to him being a friend. Christy Campbell's written a very, very good book about that particular section, the Marrages box. And he is tailed all the way to Russia, where the British are watching and reporting on everything he says and does. And sadly for him, there's our, won't see him. And so he sort of stays in this in this terrible guesthouse waiting for months and months. By now he's shacked up with one of his girlfriends because he is absolutely a forlander who cheats on Marani Bamber at any opportunity. And this is a chamber made from one of the hotels that he frequents. Tell me you've sold the film rights, please, immediate. Oh, yes, no, I have. I have. No, it's in, it's in, as they say, development. This is, this is war and peace. It's madness. It's madness. Passage to India. It's got everything. This is such a wrong. I'm not doing justice to everything that's in the book. But you know, there's so much that goes on. Anyway, so he's sitting in Russia. His cocksis bizarre chamber made now wife is because he marries as soon as Bamber draws her last breath. He has two children with her called, I mean, and this is the difference between, you know, sort of this, they're called Pauline and Irene. Pauline and Irene are the little children who are just living this dreadful life, half sisters now, Sophia in Russia. And there's our won't see them. And so, you know, he just sort of limps his way back with this now woman who's just not interested in him because he has no money. She's very happy to be with him while he has some cash. But when he has nothing, they go back to Paris and he dies penniless and alone on a Parisian hotel floor, you know, with nobody there. Before that though, you asked me earlier, did Sophia see him again once? Because Sophia had a beloved younger brother called Edward. And Edward is her life when they're growing up under the Oliver's care. You know, the older sisters are old enough to be sent to university. They are among some of the earlier students to go to Somerville College. In Oxford. In Oxford. And hate every second of it. But so Sophia is alone the only person she has to love and to cherish and who truly knows her as Edward. But then Edward gets typhoid and dies. As well. And so that's the last time she sees her father when he comes to see Edward on his dying bed and is weeping and broken by the side of the bed. And then he just leaves. And that's it. That's the last time she'll see him. And the next time she'll hear about him is he's dead on the Parisian floor. So she's lost both parents. So where is she living? Who's keeping her together? So the elephants take care of her until she reaches the age of maturity. And at the age of 17 it is customary for girls. Gals, nice gals to come out in public. They debut in public. And Queen Victoria hasn't taken the slightest bit of interest in the older children, the older girls who you know they can't stand her and she can't stand them. But for Sophia she must have a proper debut. And so she debuts at Buckingham Palace itself. A proper debutant. A proper debutant. And the two sisters are thrown in. You know it's a thrown in just I suppose it's economical to do it all together. But you know these things these debuts are so that women can be presented to court and presented to suitors. And the problem with these three girls is that they are too white to marry a brown man and too brown to marry a white man. But you see a picture of them in the book. I'm looking at it now and there's three most beautiful girls in the world. They're all wearing wedding dresses. They're wearing wedding dresses. Yeah, in veils. You know that was the debut outfit you know in ostrich and elaborate ostrich feathers in your hair and pearls. And it looks like something from a from a Tolstoy novel. They've got these sort of late Victorian very sort of beautiful silk gowns. They've all got enormous bouquets in their hands. They're wearing necklaces of pearls and diamonds. They've got enormous rings in their ears. But they're brown faces. They are they look as if they are from some sort of picture of the Zara's Russia. But the faces are entirely Indian and very beautiful and very striking and very strong. They're very strong. But all three of them are beauties. I mean the thing that's weird to me they look like those seaside cutouts where you put your face through because the faces just don't match the outfits at all. The adults. Yeah. But it's a wonderful picture. So this says Princess Bamba, Catherine and Sophia Dulep Singh at their debut at Buckingham Palace 1894. So this is you know this for Sophia is a wonderful occasion and she's worked really hard to bring herself up to scratch for this debut. She's nervous about it but she she has worked hard. For the other two they could not care less. They absolutely loathe everything about it and they only do it for Sophia. So they love their little sister very very much. These three are very very close. But they know that it's not going to open any doors for them because they are pretty anti-british. But for Sophia she will spend the next 10 years of her life becoming the most pointless person on the planet as far as I'm concerned. She goes to every party. She revels in her new status as being this sort of pin up for the newly created women's magazines are just coming out at about this time. And the latest features of her surrounded by animals in your book her howl animals and kennels. Because she wins crafts. She wins what is the sort of you know the predecessor to crafts, what will become crafts with she breeds either teeny-dye dogs or very very big dogs. So it's like pomeranians or boars always and she has a huge amount of success with them. She also gets into newspapers and magazines for being an exceptional horsewoman very good writer. She scandalises the public in a way that delights her because she writes she's one of the first women to write a bicycle in public at a time when that wasn't acceptable. And she smokes. And she smokes and she went through her receipts with him and it was just glorious. There was this box at the British Library which hadn't really been touched and the amount this woman spent on importing. Fabina Talk and these very extraordinarily expensive cigarettes from Egypt and Cairo was hilarious. And you just sort of got a picture of somebody who was you know really quite I don't know like a Kardashian if her day is the way I've put it before but really who reveled in it, reveled in that kind of attention. And the first photograph in your book taken in 1900 has this incredibly glamorous picture of a dress in the sort of is it a saree or is it both a dress and a saree? It's not quite a conventional saree is it? It's an approximation as close as they could get to a saree but you know at that point I think that's a really important picture. So with the tongue with jewels and all the kind of glories of the of the of the seek treasuries. Well the jewels actually the jewels that didn't belong to her father because they were all taken but they're the jewels of Ronnie Jinden who we mentioned in the Koehnoor chapter. Ranjit Singh's last wife. Yeah. Ranjit Singh's last wife, her grandmother who sneaked out some of the jewels which came to her otherwise none of those jewels. And these are no small jewels. These are enormous gorgeous mughal style bracelets, buzzer buns, armlets and again and a sort of wonderful sort of almost a tiara pearls hanging round her forehead. Yeah but she puts on her Indianness like a fancy dress costume at that time because she doesn't feel Indian. She doesn't speak the language, she doesn't know anything really. She knows the stories about Jinden and she knows the stories about Lahore from her father when they were very small but you know that's been a long time ago and she feels utterly British and she feels very loyal so Catherine often cautions her that you know why because she's Catherine's about to leave with Lena Shea for the tutor and go and live a lovely life until old age and castle in Germany. But before she goes she says you know what, Saff, they call her Saff, you cannot trust these people. You cannot trust these people, they've done so much harm to us and Bambo is just what she says is just so filled with venom that it's you know just not even recorded in Saffa's diary but she argues with her sister and says you can't you can't judge people like that you cannot just write off a people like that and Saffa is quite comfortable but then something happens which changes everything. This is the Delhi Der Bar of 1903. So the Delhi Der Bar is the party and for party girl it girl Sophia delieves saying it is the thing that she has to go to because everybody's going every single person she knows is going. Everyone is there. Every Maharaja, every Nawab, every minor Taku everyone is going to go to Delhi and see this extraordinary sort of mock mughal Der Bar. And London's going to empty out for it. I mean everybody is beating a path to going find a place under Canvas from London as well so all of the people that she socialises with and she's this you know she's still styled Princess Sophia and they know that she's the Maharaja's daughter but they can't go they don't get an invitation. So Bamber who is the really feisty old sister she's not having this and she regularly goes to war with the government about everything including you know where they sit in the chapel the royal chapel she is what we'd call a green ink letter writer. So she writes and she writes saying you know what about our invitation where's our invitation are we know can we have an invitation where's our invitation and everyone who ignores them just completely ignores them. It's understood that the boys can't go they are banned from going less they stir up some kind of rebellion but no one's really thought about the girls so no one just bothers to answer until this letter writing gets to such an irritating level that the secretary of state for India says oh it's a bit late now sorry just found your letters you were six million letters but it's a bit late we can't really arrange for the kind of protocols that would be needed to welcome you sufficiently so so sorry about that. So it tells me this isn't going to put them off. No they are brilliant because they go oh it's far from being despondent they say well he didn't say no he just said not yet so let's go I think go on different ships. Into the skies or I think they were down on then yeah their names are down but they you know they were so thought to be so unimportant and nobody really took any notice and so they sort of they pitch up in India they go to Lahore for the older girls it confirms everything that they already knew for supply this is a huge awakening because she sees everything that her father lost she also sees you know statues to her godmother Queen Victoria but nothing to her father nothing to her grandfather and for the first time she faces racism because she might be the big I am in London it's nothing she's another brown face in India. This is a very common thing isn't it and it's the Gandhi gets this that Indians are very rare in Britain at this point and have a sort of exotic value and also the British in Britain are quite excited by this but the colonial British whether it's in South Africa or whether it's in India are steeped in imperial racism so you get Gandhi who's who's lauded in in London and made a great fuss over and and seen as this very exciting figure arrives in South Africa and he's thrown out of a first-class carriage and beat a Marit spoke similarly with Sophia. Oh she and her sister treated a bismarly on a train where they have a first-class ticket and you know they're allowed to travel on a first-class train and yet the guard doesn't believe that they should be where they are and treats them with an appalling disregard which you know Bamber says that's just par for the course she's she's the first one out to India but Sophia just finds it hideous and while they're also in India something else very amazing happens that she gets a political conscience she suddenly sees people starving you know this is on the back of another failed harvest so she sees people emaciated with hunger she travels through Punjab which is the very thing that the British didn't want them to do and she sees people throwing themselves at her feet when they hear who she is that she's the Maharajas daughter that she's run jeet sings cup she's the granddaughter of the lion of Punjab and they keep telling her you know tell us what to do tell us what to do you do tell us anything and we'll do it for you we'll rise up you just tell us what to do and she's so astonished by this she's like why do they care why do they care so much and she hears this other voice she falls in with the nationalist as well her sister is quite openly and she's not a ranch but rye who's a very important early nationalist you and go by Krishna Gokali who we've spoken about a lot and well he's the person that connects jinnah and gandhi and so everybody else yeah so so this there is a momentous talk that is going on in Lahore go by Krishna Gokali who he's spoken about before he was the mild-mannered let's not use violence to get the British to give us some of our powers back nationalist leader and they've got la la la large but rye who also has the name given to him the lion of Punjab first time after rungi sing someone is deemed worthy of that title and it's large but rye who says by force if necessary get them out so these two have fallen out these two nationalist leaders have fallen up bitterly and for the first time they are going to do a speech together in Lahore and the girls happen to be there so they are desperate to go and listen to you know it's all it's going to be a thing it's going to be a thing everyone's buzzing in the city this is going to be a massive thing and they turn up and two suppliers horror you know how they still do it to you the IP's in India are ushered to the front and put on the stage I mean it seems like a great honour it's a worse place to sit could you can't hear anything was the anything but everyone can see you so they are ushered to the front and they see this momentous thing we're first Gokali does his speech and then right la la la large but rye does his absolute fire brand speech and it breaks the fire she suddenly understands you know what has been done to these people and how how angry they are and how you know the injustice and she writes about it for the first time now how did I not know any of this so just like her father it's such a trajectory starting off very much embraced by Queen Victoria brought inside given presence given love and then suddenly something happens in middle life and she begins to change every every thing of her life changes from this point yeah and because of her it's a really amazing thing the Gopal question Gokali and la la large but rye both go and see her together they go and see her together and Lahore saying we just need to see the lion's child and pay our respects and she throws throws a per-departee in Shalima garden yes she gets the child in my garden she blocks it all off so that she can throw a party I mean you know the so they still are recorded this enormous status in Lahore where they are the royal family anyway so so from having some sort of fallen in love with with large butthorough and the the nationalist who are shouting again and again avas though avas they'll give us a voice give us a voice and politics give us a voice give us a voice it's on the voyage home that she hears in a telegram that la la large butthorough has been arrested and beaten and put in prison and it is on that voyage that she suddenly turns from somebody who loved being part of Britain to somebody who then says you are my foe as you are my enemies you are the monsters I hate you and she comes back to Britain unlike her father though that doesn't last very long for her father it consumes him and it leaves him dead on the floor of her hotel but for Sophia lasts as long as she the voyage lasts and she comes back to Britain and then she hears that same voice avas though avas though in English give us a voice give us a voice but it's coming from the suffragettes and she suddenly feels at home she's got a cause now just before we go plunge down into the suffragettes rabbit hole let's just finish up the nationalist story so 1909 she's actually present at the farewell party for Gandhi Gandhi is as a young man a lawyer in London is leaving for South Africa yeah so she's there yeah she's like she's like the wears wally of historical narrative it was getting a bit beyond a joke at one point I just thought she cannot possibly be there and then you'd find like supporting evidence oh no no no she was there too yeah she I mean do we know what how she heard of Gandhi or what the first rating thing is is that she was the repository for her family's letters so we have all of the family's letters but her letters are all lost so we don't know what she said about that particular day she I mean we also know that she met you know through Atea Hussein who was a great travel writer if anyone's sort of interested in in another great woman of Pakistani heritage Atea Hussein met her as well but we only know about that because we've got Atea Hussein's writings but we've lost hers so that's a deep frustration anyone listening to this who's got some letters in their attic just you know get it hold on to them yeah so the last phase of her life 1909 1910 she joins what will become the suffragettes so they're not called that yet I didn't think yeah so this is there's already a split in in approach the WSPU of Emily in Pankhurst and Millicent Force it there's suffragists who are much more about political negotiation and and putting political pressure on the powers that be to get women a vote and Emily in Pankhurst who are fed up of asking nicely and Sophia throws herself into the more militant wing so first of all she starts by fundraising for them you know so giving great deal of money herself what she has gives the crap gives a horse and cart to horse and cart because that would be useful but also you know she said starts and Emily very quickly realizes that this is a this is a this is a this is a propaganda bomb the Victoria is now not on on the throne at this time it's Edward who's on the throne her son but she realizes to have Queen Victoria's god child who lives at Hampton Court Palace one thing I skipped over is that Queen Victoria in after their debut in Buckingham Palace wants to look after Sophia so it gives her a grace and favor at Hampton Court she lives at Hampton Court bizarrely around other people who have grace and favor apartments who all were awarded them for the work they did against the Indians during the mutiny so she's surrounded by people they wonder Bamber and Catherine want to peel their skin off but it's suffice quite happy to be in these places but for the others they're surrounded by people who hate them anyway. Flashy verdict on us heroes of the mutiny indeed indeed and that really bugs them so and then and this is the point where we where we have this picture that started you on your journey she goes outside to have the court and she starts selling suffrage it yeah and actually you know the suffrage it's you know in time sort of after 1911 1912 and becoming stepping up their actions and becoming more and more militant they're setting fire to things they're setting fire to trains they bomb Lloyd a Georgia's summer house um they are threatening to slash portraits and pictures and set fire to things so the whole you know the picture gallery at Hampton Court is closed down all the cafes and things are now losing trade because people aren't coming to Hampton Court in numbers and they have this woman to look at every day and blame does she care no she drives press carts through London this is a thing that the suffrage ants used to do which was a for again press attention to drive these carts and sell the suffrage at newspaper and they would park up at places like Druy Lane where they would be pelted with bottles you know the slightly you know um well-oiled folk men who came out from the theaters and they would have standoffs and they would do on purpose to get attention um so fire not only went on these press cart drives she drove the carts so there are pictures in the book of her again in her minks and her ridiculous hats driving a press cart through London she gives very good hat so all this reaches a climax on the 18th of November 1910 when the suffragettes march on parliament yeah so this is um this known as black Friday now before black Friday used to mean a pointless rush to the shops to get cut prize high fires it actually meant something black Friday was the closest the women had got to getting the vote in Britain and there was a bill that was passing through parliament the prime minister at the time was a man called Asquith who was very liberal in so many ways but in this had a blind spot he thought that if women got the vote the conservatives would always be in power that they were by nature conservatives so did not want to give them the vote and so he cuts the time this bill has to pass and so it's basically suffocating it in its cradle and Emily and her suffragettes the WSPU get to hear about this a few days before it happens and they call an extraordinary meeting at the Albert Hall and she says this is what I think is going to happen and if it does we are going to march on parliament and we are going to hammer down the door and we are going to make Asquith explain himself to us who is with me and this place is filled to the rafters with suffragettes and the cries go I am with you I am with you I am with you and one of the first to stand up is Sophia who is now you know one of their rock star suffragettes so there is an ordinance because the home secretary at the time a man you might have heard of called Winston Churchill never heard of him never heard of whatever what have happened to him how to go listen to you have good as the rest of history dear yes they have done a very good one on the young young young Winston then anyway there is a slightly older Winston Winston 2.0 and he's decided that he's sick of these women clogging up the judicial system and the courts so he's passing this ordinance that if they march on mass they can just be arrested and picked up so they can't clog things up with their protests and shut down roads and just make a nuisance of themselves so women in groups of more than 12 are not allowed to march so what Emily does is she calls another meeting at Caxton Hall and she says on this black Friday and she says right we are going to march in groups of 12 at five to ten minutes intervals so they can't pick us up until we get there and then we're all there together and we will tear the place apart and the first group she takes are the rock stars so it's her it is Durandinelligan who is an absolute pioneer in girls education in the right country Adorite is not in the first group but the right Honorable Avelina Haverfield is who is riding a horse with a whip and a gun in her pocket she's absolutely known and has been arrested these women have been arrested numerous times there is Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Britain's first woman doctor and first woman mayor is in this group there is Mrs. Saul Solomon who's married to a great statesman from the Cape who is there and they are marching in the first group and as they march and the place by the way Parliament Square which I know very very well is filled with people because this is pre-TV so you know you want to get your jolly as you go out in person and the suffering is always flag what they're going to do in the papers before so they say they're going to do this tear the place apart as the place is just filled with bystanders and also policemen in playing clothes and also people from an American ship sailors from an American ship who just on shore leave and they want to see what happens you know so the place is rammed so the crowds part for Emily and her group and they get to St Stephen's Gate and they think well this is going well we're fine and then they are what we were called Kettled by the gate what does that mean? It means that the line of police officers stand in front of them so they can't move and they are pinned to the gate they can't go forward they can't go back and they are forced to watch as group after group of suffragettes arrives and then they are just set upon by police on horses with buttons by playing clothes police officers and by members of the public so they are you know women are picked up and thrown into crowds saying do what you want to these. In your wonderful book there is a front page of the Daily Mirror where there's a photograph over the whole of the front page and it says violent scenes at Westminster where many suffragettes were arrested while trying to force their way into the House of Commons and you've got a woman on the ground Ada Wright's first friend and there are kind of three playing clothes police men are going a top hat standing over her maybe kicking her I think the policeman is kicking her by looking at it and it's yeah it's violence it's real real mob violence. It's state sanctioned violence so I because you know the directive has come out that don't arrest them just tire them out so there are police officers who have meant to be in those sort of custodians of law and order who are picking up women and slimy women's walls and against the tarmac and against the pavement I should say and the whole idea is that they'll get tired and walk away well these are suffragettes you don't mess with suffragettes because they don't go away they don't back down they get up again and then they're thrown down again and they get up again as a fire who is by the way I'm no giant I'm five foot two I've got pretty small hands but her hands are small to mine and I know this because I've tried on her gloves and she's tiny she manages she's watching by the gate and Emily is screaming at the gate just to rest them just to rest them arrest them for God's sake arrest them but there are no rest and they're just watching this carnage sexual violence is a real thing this day where women's clothes are being ripped the hands are going up skirts you know the the kind of testimony I've gone through I it's horrifying and it's one of the worst parts of researching this book I found it deeply upsetting anyway Emily is screaming the others are screaming they can't get out but little Sophia is small enough to get through the kettle and she is driven out into this mob ducks underneath the arms of the policeman yeah and she big and it's because she sees this woman who she does not know who's being repeatedly slammed against the floor and she shoves her tiny little self in between this police officer in this woman and body checks him off and hit for him you know it's like swatting a fly but he knows her because this is a woman who's been in all the magazines and the newspapers it is like having you know if not Kate Middleton Pippa Middleton springing up in a riot you know you know you know oh Meghan Mark yeah I mean you know her so this police officer drops the woman and tries to disappear in the crowd now most of us would think hey we've won that not Sophia she chases him down in through the mob going show me your number because the policeman covered up their numbers and so you know you have to have your numbers on your epilets she's like show me your number show me your number it's only when she gets the number of e700 that she then backs on she's baffeted and buffeted around like all the women the women are then finally after five and a half hours roughly a fighting with the police and you know bystands and by the way all the empty kind of like hanging out on the windows and on the railings watching so fine in the arrests are made but no one is charged because having this testimony go through the courts will be a nightmare Sophia pursues a case against v700 not because if anything happens to her anyone who hits her but because of this one suffrage and in the end I saw this one piece of paper you know the one that moment when you get chills when you found something and it just it was her escalating the matter and not giving up and it just letter after letter and then suddenly there was this thing and you can see the pressure the pencil send no more reply to her and it was signed WSC Winston Spencer Churchill and I thought she caught up everyone's nose it's amazing and she does get up everyone says jortafis says have we no hold in her on her and she tries to throw herself under ask with scar yeah she tries to throw herself at the car of the prime minister she numerous times tries to get arrested she gets picked up but she gets but she never gets to have a moment in prison and do the hunger strike which is what she really wants like her sister suffragettes and then war breaks out and most of the suffragettes put down their rocks put down their weapons and they get behind the war effort and never was that true for for Sophia you know despite everything that's happened she gets behind the war effort and she raises money for Indian troops are among the first to be sent out to the trenches because they don't have the right boots and coats but she also goes to work in brighten as a nurse to nurse the broken bodies that are coming back from the front and then this is the weirdest stories because she's such a film star so these these sort of like Punjabi a lot of Punjabi soldiers wake up in these hospitals and they open their eyes and they see first what the first woman they've seen for ages and the first brown woman they've seen for ages and then they find out she's the run jeet sing grand or something they think they're high on opium and they beg her for some proof because her family won't believe them somehow she manages to procure hundreds of tiny ivory mirrors and signs them like a film star saying no it was me you know I was here and there are pictures in your book extraordinary pictures of one legged wounded Sikh soldiers with their turbans on early versions of wheelchairs and sort of reclining sofas on the lawns of the brighten pavilion and indeed the brighten pavilion itself filled with filled with starved bed sheets and lines of neatly arranged beds with all the patients arranged almost on parade inside the brighten pavilion it's an extraordinary time and it's and it's a time when she you know puts ego to one side and rolls up her sleeves and tries to help she's always she's becomes this woman who just always tries to help which is why I just have so much respect for her and what's sad raising money for for warm clothes and hats for Indian soldiers and the trenches she tries to get she tries to get the metropolitan police lend her an elephant from London zoo so she can march it on Oxford street and collect money for them and she's like bonkers but she also does this one this one sad thing while she's treating as a nurse treating the host the Indian soldiers is that she has to she doesn't speak her own language so she has to talk to the white nurses who have come back from the Raj and say can you translate this for me and can they translate it back because she doesn't even speak her own language which is painful there's a very poignant note in the last chapter of your book when you talk about her who's who went tree in 1934 and she just has one interest she puts just one line the advancement of women so that's her that's her final cause I mean there's so much more and and as her story ends in sadness but I'll just I mean just leave you with this she never has a family even though she's completely loving and giving but after it's actually sort of you know World War One she loses her direction after the war because you know the suffrage at battle is one I suppose in 1928 there is the representation of women they're allowed to vote but it's World War Two that again gives her what she has never had which is a family she takes in evacuee children and she looks after them and she becomes a mother to them that's her first time of feeding maternal and the reason I know all of the as much as I know I mean they're you know the smell of her the look of her and this is just how I always like to end this is because I spoke to people who knew her I spoke to the evacuee children I spoke to the the God daughter I spoke to the maid who worked for her at Hampton Court and that is how close that history is a time a time when women didn't have the vote a time when they had to fight like that for the vote here in Britain as I said at the beginning this the extraordinary way the story connects things that we think of as omniscient history like the second Anglo-Sieg war and Chilean Wallabarga all those enormous battles and the and the Koei-Nor in 1849 coming to England all that sort of thing and then at the end of this her story or meeting people who actually knew her the sad recent yeah absolutely and you know she died she died sadly you know sort of in pen in Buckinghamshire she didn't have enough money to heat Faraday House her her place in in Hampton Court anymore so she lived a quiet life but she was remembered with so much love by the people I spoke to so you know real hero I think oh what a wonderful book oh I'm just going to end this by saying anyone says this please go out now and buy Sophia Princess suffragette revolutionary buy a need to annan which is the most wonderful and extraordinary and unlikely story you will read ever Ricky it's been a pleasure being a guest on your podcast you need to from me William Durham Paul and from me to me