Another Review Reviewed

Here's an extract from Anne Garvey's review of Jan Dalley's The Black Hole in The Independent's June 25th edition:

"She concludes that the Black Hole was a reality (the exact numbers, she concedes, must be impossible to get entirely correct), but she does ask questions. 'Was it deliberate brutality of the part of the victor, or was it simply a sad mistake on the part of the nawab's soldiers?' How did the story prevail in a century packed with bloodshed and massacre on a much grander scale? Why were succeeding generations keen to re-tell it?"

Now, here's an extract from Mahmud Farooqui's review of the same book in Outlook's July 10 issue:

"She concludes that the Black Hole was a reality (the exact numbers, she concedes, must be impossible to get entirely correct although Little claims six survivors out of nine prisoners and British historian Linda Colley counts eight survivors out of 40), but she does ask questions. 'Was it deliberate brutality of the part of the victor, or was it simply a sad mistake on the part of the nawab's soldiers?' How did the story prevail in a century packed with bloodshed and massacre on a much grander scale? Why were succeeding generations keen to re-tell it?"

In another extract from Garvey's review, she writes:

"It is hard to credit that thousands would risk their lives, and more thousands their fortunes, for nutmeg. But do believe it. 'All historians agree the British Empire began with stimulants,' Dalley asserts. Our nation would 'go just to just about any lengths for a buzz'."

Over to Farooqui:

"The East India Company and its trading endeavours are, for her, a search for nutmeg, for exotica, 'the need for a buzz'."

Now, look at Hilary Spurling's review of the same book in The Observer of June 25:

"A dismal history of blunders on both sides had been successfully recast, in Nirad Chaudhuri's phrase, to throw 'a moral halo over the conquest of India'. "

Here's Farooqui again:

"...the memory of the Black Hole threw, as Nirad C. Chaudhuri puts it, 'A moral halo over the British conquest of India'..."

Finally, a sentence from Ashling O'Connor's Times' report on June 19th:

"There have been several challenges to Holwell’s account, not least by J. H. Little, an English schoolmaster, who, in 1916, labelled it a 'giant hoax'."

Over to Farooqui:

"So, what was the Black Hole? For British historian J.H. Little, writing in 1916, merely a 'gigantic hoax'."

Hmmm...coincidence?

(NB. Farooqui's review wasn't available online at the time of writing this post, so one couldn't link to it.)