Deborah Baker | Julienne Schaer
Deborah Baker’s book—her fifth—arrived without much fanfare. She is out with a book after seven years. The Last Englishmen: Love, War, and the End of an Empire lives up to its rather ambitious and almost intimidating title. It encompasses a vast world into a compact but beautifully written book.
Crammed with facts; reads like fiction. The book is set in the British empire that is struggling to keep its hold, and Baker creates this world through two young, ambitious Englishmen—John Bicknell Auden, brother of poet W.H. Auden, and Michael Spender, brother of poet Stephen Spender—who come to India to find fortune and livelihood. Both are pioneers in studying the Himalayas, yet their story has not made it out of academic circles.
Baker chose to write about India, specifically Kolkata, to challenge the established order of the heroic story, mostly by the west, about defeating Hitler’s evil empire. “Calcutta really bore the brunt of the war in India,” says Baker, over the phone from New York. “It had the Burmese refugees, it had the famine, it had skyrocketing cost of living and it had the great Calcutta killing. And, it was bombed by the Japanese. Our popular culture, our movies, our spy novels are all focused on this, and that makes us look heroic saving the world from the evil of Hitler. There were a lot of people who fought in the war whose agenda was not to get rid of Hitler, their agenda was to get rid of [Winston] Churchill and the empire.”
Baker merges these rather disparate threads to create a vivid picture of Kolkata in the war. “I was delighted to find this group of characters in which I could depict how London depicted the war and Churchill, [and] this tiny little island fighting off this evil regime by itself,” she says.
Baker captures John’s fears of insanity and impotence, his postings in lonely dark bungalows and his desperation for love. Then, there is Michael, his mother’s favourite, who grows up pragmatic as he sees his parents living a lifestyle they cannot support. Both Michael and John fall in love with Nancy Sharp, a painter who is a bit of a spendthrift and a “veteran enemy of compulsory hygiene”. W.H. Auden also almost had a dalliance with Sharp, hoping it would “imbibe the required he-man qualities”, writes Baker.
Baker excels in her descriptions, and scatters lovely anecdotes across her book for readers to greedily lap up. Sumptuous, her book has all the ingredients of a satisfying novel. “I want the reader to have fun,” she says, “if the reader can find the time.” This one does require that. A savouring, slowly.
THE LAST ENGLISHMENLOVE, WAR, AND THE END OF EMPIRE
Author: Deborah Baker
Publisher: Penguin
Randomhouse
Price: Rs 599
Pages: 358