Roy MoxhamBesprekingen

This book is described as a biography of Phoolan Devi, a low-caste woman born in a rural community in India. She is married off at the age of 11 and suffered years of abuse by her much older husband. After being returned in disgrace to her family, she is kidnapped and raped by bandits. Phoolan is a survivor. She joined the bandits, taking money from the rich and sharing it with the poor. After years in jail, she becomes a Member of Parliament, always fighting for the poor and for women's rights.

Roy Moxham is fascinated with India and writes to Phoolan while she is in jail. Upon her release, he visits her and her family several times. I was never clear what his motivations were, and wish the book had been more about Phoolan's life instead of her times with him, helping him buy a house in India etc.

I couldn't warm up to the writer who opens the book by saying he was "ashamed" that people thought he was interested in a romantic or sexual relationship with Phoolan because she's "homely". I suspect he overplayed his importance to her and his role in things.

Also, the book contains a list of illustrations, but no actual illustrations. More frustration!½

Superb book - part travel part history part detection - and thoroughly original. The author is also a very good evocative writer. It is a shame the book has no photos but I can understand the publishers balking at the cost.

It is very pleasing that Mr Moxham has continued writing with some interesting titles of which two I am very keen to acquire quickly.
http://roymoxham.com/

This is a biography of India's Phoolan Devi who became an outlaw after being brutalized by higher caste men and sought revenge while becoming a heroine to low caste peoples. After serving time in prison she was released and became a politician only to be the victim of assassination. The author was an archivist in Britain who, for some inexplicable reason, wrote her a letter while she was in prison. He befriended her and travelled to India many times on her behalf. Moxham's actions leave one scratching their head, but he sheds light on a notable person and India's social dilemmas that are not well known in the West.½

This is not only entertaining, but more informative than the other brief histories out there. The author traces the history of tea largely through economics and politics, but uses enough examples and anecdotes to keep it interesting. I was surprised that there wasn't more about tea growing in Africa, as the author was a tea estate manager in Malawi at one time, but I would recommend this book.

An amazing story of what must be one of the longest artificial constructions the world has ever seen (after the Great Wall of China). In the Nineteenth Century the British rulers of India decided to create a giant thorny hedge down the length of India to ensure the tax on salt was enforced. You have to give it to the British; whether it be frankly ludicrously long hedges cutting a whole nation in half or the genocide of the Tasmanian Aborigines, they don't do things by half.

Of course, the most amazing thing about the hedge is that the world had completely forgotten about it until the author found a lone reference to the hedge in an old rare book. Moxham may not be a professional writer but he is a good detective, tracking down other references to the hedge and illustrating the role the integral role the Great Hedge played in Indian life, complete with a cameo of Mahatma Gandhi.

I doubt this will be a spoiler because obviously he finds a remnant of the hedge by the conclusion.

I do not drink tea; I don't like the taste of it and never have. Nevertheless, I found A Brief History of Tea: The Extraordinary Story of the World's Favourite Drink, by Roy Moxham, to be a vastly entertaining and informative book. In it, Moxham traces the origins of tea from ancient China through to modern India, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and various nations of Africa. Moxham himself ran a tea plantation in the early 1960s, in what was then called Nyasaland and is now known as Malawi, and he begins and ends his book with some personal reminiscences of that period of his life. The story is, of course, full of imperialism, appalling working and living conditions, near-slavery and revolutions; there is also perhaps more than I, a non-believer, needed to know about the production of different types of tea and how advances in agricultural technology helped to increase yield exponentially. On the other hand, I now know why my mother prefers Typhoo Tea over all others - she is an Englishwoman and lived much of her early life around Birmingham, the home of that British company. Good to know!

Good overview of the history of tea. Excellent introduction for those unfamiliar.

This is an excellent book. It is well-written - compelling, not dry. It is, by its nature, a broad view of the subject but it is deep enough that the reader isn't left feeling that any area has been too superficially dealt with. It definitely highlights areas for further reading but is satisfying in and of itself as a treatment of the history of the tea industry and how it has touched our lives.

A look at tea from its origins to the present, with first-hand experience by the author from his time in a tea plantation in Malawi.

I really enjoyed reading about the production of tea from a practical point, and was impressed at how much information was included regarding the changing work conditions of plantation workers. It got rather depressing, as they were treated horrendously during the colonial era especially, but (as with chocolate, coffee and other cash crops), these things are important to highlight for those of us who may not have thought about the origins of our luxury goods.

I would have liked to read more about the ancient history of tea, and this book concentrated more on what happened in Britain and the colonies. It did tend to jump around from subject to subject, such as going off on tangents about tea production in the middle of chapters that were supposedly about its history. I would have also loved to have read more about what happened on the plantation Mr. Moxham was managing. If he wrote an autobiography, I would definitely pick it up.

I just happened on this fairly short book, a little over 200 Pages, while browsing in the library for something on a specific period of India. There was little, but there was this interesting looking book, called [the Great Hedge of India] by Roy Moxham. Moxham found mention of this hedge, a formidable hedge, ultimately about 2300 miles long, quite wide and tall, and including plants with thorns which made it truly impenetrable. Yet, in the current day it was almost unknown. Moxham went to search for it, making three trips total before finding a remnant that was satisfying enough to allow him to stop searching with some sense of accomplishment. The purpose of this hedge, up until about 1877 was to provide a barrier separating British India from the rest of India in order to prevent salt smuggling from the non British area to the British area where salt was heavily taxed.

The book is about half and half divided between an account of his search for the hedge, and about salt, the salt tax in British India and prior; salt taxes in other places; Gandhi's rebellion against the salt tax, and the need for salt. This book was satisfying in how it seemed to provide answers to questions as they occurred to me - such as how much salt to we really need - something we dont' think about much in this age of cheap, and usually too much salt. Nowhere but in part of France did the author find a salt tax that was anywhere near as high as that on salt in British India. A tax on salt is a tax that disproportionately affects the poor, while being necessary for survival, which was why Gandhi focused on it. Moxham goes into how lowering salt consumption, which in Bengali under British rule was about 10 pounds a year on average per person as opposed to 12 or more in non British India in the 1870's, would lead to lassitude in good times, and in times of famine, would greatly increase the death rate resulting from lack of food alone.

What caused the hedge to finally be abandoned, was not, unfortunately, the abolition of the salt tax, but the extension of British rule so that they could control the production of salt throughout India.

All in all, a short, satisfying, and informative read. The one thing it lacked was a photograph of the remains of the hedge when they found it. I tracked one down though at http://www.rmoxham.freeserve.co.uk/maps.htm. Without knowing the background, frankly, it would be hard to identify the vegetation as part of a hedge. They look more like some bushy trees. But keep in mind that the types of plants found in the hedge usually didn't survive for more than 60 years, and that due to the construction of the hedge on a rise it made an ideal place for the construction of roads - most of the hedge now being under a layer of highway. In the book Moxham mentions having his picture taken at a place where there were clusters of thorny acacias and thorn covered Indian plum tree. The original hedge contained many plants including these two. The thorns of the plum trees within the other plants helped make the hedge impenetrable, and I believe that is what is mostly shown in the photograph.

Reading this book reminds me of how incomplete historical knowledge is. This was a massive undertaking at the time (colonial India) and was just about lost to history until Roy Moxham undertook his exhaustive investigation. He writes a fascinating tale--should I say of obsession or megalomania on the one side, persistence and ingenuity on the other?

I must have read this before Hurricane Katrina. Perhaps this is a bit of cautionary tale about the ultimate futility of civil engineering? Another point that resonates is the egomania of Albert Speer who designed architecture not for its use but for how well the structures would stand the ravages of time in the bright future of the 1000-year reich....

My parents gave this to me for Christmas because having spent the last 2.5 years in India, they thought I might enjoy it. And they were right! It's a facinating book, well written and engaging. Its a great adventure and I have to give him points for being a thoroughly determined researcher!

A buddy said "Read this, it shows how crazy those Brits were." Don't want to comment on the relative or absolute craziness of the Brits, but this guy can tell a story. And he is a great detective.

The history of tea has fascinated me since I read about cake tea in a Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee mystery. Roy Moxham's work focuses on tea in British history, from the earliest time tea is served in England to the years in the 1960's the author worked assistant manager on a tea estate in Malawi. Particularly intriguing was the period of 1700-1787, where tea in England was heavily taxed. This lead to an atmosphere much like drugs of today, with smuggling, adulterated products and violence. Only when the tariffs were reduced did tea become a less expensive and less a object for criminal activities. British expansion in India and China was influenced by the popularity of this drink, as the English became the largest tea drinking nation in Europe.

Great for any history buff and wonderful when enjoyed with your favorite cup of tea.

if I should chance to see Anu after the pandemic - would like to hear her insights on this
also - my book says published by Carroll & Graf

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/reviews/article87615.ece OR http://tinyurl.com/d3oc2
Tony Gould wrote a very good review of this excellent book. His final warning is true: "a nice cuppa will never taste quite the same again."
And here's an interview with Roy Moxham:
http://www.metro.co.uk/metro/interviews/interview.html?in_page_id=8&in_inter... OR http://tinyurl.com/bsnae