Author’s Note
Every author likes to think that he has caught the essential attitudes of the characters about whom he is writing. I’m no different and I hope that Morgan, Pegg, McGucken and others express the doubts, horrors and plain ignorance of British troops plunged into the maelstrom of the Indian Mutiny. They knew war—although not civil war—but were bemused by the intricacies of Indian and Anglo-Indian society, especially the mores of the Honourable East India Company and its servants.
The events, and most of the people, are real. I’ve chosen to take some liberties with the timetable of Morgan’s arrival in Bombay and his move up country towards the heart of the Mutiny hut, that aside, the battles and skirmishes are as true to life as I can make them.
The language of my characters i
