Specifications
| Publisher | Journey Books |
| ISBN 13 | 9781804692424 |
| ISBN 10 | 1804692425 |
| Author | Clare Jenkins |
| Language | English |
| Book Description | For 15 years, award-winning travel writer Stephen McClarence and his BBC Radio journalist wife Clare Jenkins made a series of journeys through India to learn about one of its most eccentric and fast-dwindling communities: the Anglo-Indians. Mainly descendants of British men and Indian women, their combined heritage stretches back 350 years through the times of the East India Company and the British Raj. In Jhansi - a railway hub in the state of Uttar Pradesh and inspiration for John Masters's 1950s book Bhowani Junction - the Anglo-Indian community is reduced to around 30 families. Teatime at Peggy's shares their stories. Inspired by Jenkins' own Anglo-Indian family connections, the couple immersed themselves in the customs of this little-known dimension to India, soon developing a profound affection for their new friends, particularly for two of the area's most memorable figureheads: the title character 'Aunty Peggy', daughter and widow of railwaymen, overseer of the European cemetery, and 'friend of the great and the good, the rich and the poor'; and Captain Roy Abbott, the last British landowner in India, who never dined without wearing a blazer, cravat and immaculately pressed trousers. The authors spent hours at Peggy's kitchen table - eating cake, samosas and curry; drinking tea; welcoming eccentric characters, like Pastor Rao who could recite Winston Churchill speeches from memory; listening to stories, told in lilting accents, of the Railway Institute and May Queen Balls, Monsoon Toad Balls (where 'the ugliest, most hideous-looking man' would win the prize), waltzes and foxtrots, dancing in the jungle to Victor Silvester gramophone records, games of rummy and housey-housey, and Anglo-Indian cookery that embraced plum cake, goat's brain curry, Mulligatawny soup and crème caramel. Warm, humorous and evocative, Teatime at Peggy's is a lyrical, loving homage to the Anglo-Indians. Filled with larger-than-life characters and with the ever-present exhilaration of 21st-century India, it is both intimate and revelatory, and a testament to the importance of tradition, community and friendship. This enchanting book is for anyone who knows India well - or who simply yearns to take the 'trip of a lifetime' to the 'sub-continent'. and see things a little differently. |
| About the Author | Stephen McClarence is an award-winning travel writer whose work has appeared in The Times, Sunday Times, Daily and Sunday Telegraph, Daily and Sunday Express, Yorkshire Post, National Geographic Traveller and DestinAsian magazine. A finalist (and winner) in numerous travel writing awards, he won the major National Daily Travel Writer of the Year award for a Times article about Ramji, a rickshaw driver he met in Varanasi. He has also reviewed books for The Times and been an exhibiting photographer. Clare Jenkins has been a regular contributor to Radio 4's Woman's Hour, including reporting on women's lives in India. She has also made hundreds of features and documentaries for BBC Radio. These include a half-hour programme about Jhansi's Anglo-Indians, broadcast in 2015 and also called Teatime at Peggy's. She has previously written books about women's relationships with Roman Catholic priests, and people's experiences of bereavement, writes features for On Yorkshire magazine and is a member of the Oral History Society. She has a particular interest in the Anglo-Indian community as one of her (British) great-uncles married an Indian woman. |
| Publication Date | 7 June 2024 |
| Number of Pages | 296 pages |
Teatime at Peggy's: A Glimpse of Anglo-India
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