One wishes all of history's winners could write similarly illuminating accounts. Robert's autobiography tells a very partial history of the Raj, but offers great insight on how campaigns were conducted and won. The mutiny and the second Afghan war receive much of the focus (also: Abyssinia, Bangladesh).

Things I learned:
-In the 1850s, regulations required that recruits served a decade in India before becoming eligible for leave
-The new cartridges really were made with pig and cow grease, something Roberts excoriates as infuriating incompetence
-Roberts' two preoccupations: logistics, and keeping the initiative. (and selection of his officers, I should add)
-On the former, his constant attention to the procurement, treatment, and loading of pack animals.
-On the latter, it's remarkable how frequently he chooses to attack against superior numbers in order to retain initiative and break the morale of the opposition -- the attack on the Afghan position on the was to Kabul as an example
-Most of his attacks employed some form of indirection
-His advice on the Burma expedition that it's fruitless for any column to go after dacoits unless they are provisioned the march 10 days or more
-The camaraderie between the highlanders and the ghurkas
-The quality of English education -- Roberts' prose style is superb
-Small insane details: hiking to his snowed in house in tibet, his son's nanny trying to murder her charge to get out of the job (her husband wouldn't let her leave because of the wages), carrion birds too fat to fly in the aftermath of the capture of Delhi, the native soldier losing a hand propping open the door of a fortified position which they then storm, overwhelming the defenders, the man who blew the gates of delhi being killed later by a misjudging a delayed low fuse. ( )