Birds of Passage

Henrietta is a true original. Clever, vivacious and interested in everything, she balanced the demands of high profile public life with that of a caring mother. The home-schooled daughter of a bankrupt Earl, in thrall to her handsome wayward brother, but married off to a plump pudding of a man - the nabob Edward Clive, governor of Madras - her partial escape was to ride across southern India, in a vast tented caravan propelled by dozens of elephants, camels and a hundred bullock carts and write home.

Birds of Passage, a unique trifocular account of three very different women travelling across southern India in the late 18th century, in the immediate aftermath of the last of the Mysore Wars between Tipoo Sahib and the Raj. Half a generation later, the well travelled Charly would be chosen as tutor for the young princess Victoria, the First Empress of India.