ISBN: 0-7524-2835-7
Tempus Publishing Ltd (2006)
RRP: £20

The first comprehensive history of India’s film industry, one that now rivals Hollywood. Hollywood may define our idea of movies but it is the city of Bombay on the west coast of India that is now the centre of world cinema. Every year the Indian film industry produces more than a 1,000 feature films, every day 14 million Indians go to a movie and a billion more people a year buy tickets for Indian movies than for Hollywood ones.

The rise of Bombay as the film capital of the world has been remarkable. Bollywood takes the cinematic techniques of Hollywood and uses them to produce movies that bear no relation to the original but have a compelling appeal that, in the last half a century, has enthralled audiences throughout eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. The movies themselves are a self-contained world with their multiple song and dance routines, intense melodramas, plots that contain everything from farce to tragedy, but always produce a happy ending.

The men and women who create these movies are even more remarkable and it is this fantastic, rich, diverse story, a veritable Indian fairyland that Mihir Bose, a native of Bombay, tells in the first comprehensive history of this major social and cultural phenomenon. Bollywood movies may only recently have begun to be noticed in the West, but they have long defined the very concept of cinema for many millions across the globe. While the name Bollywood echoes and acknowledges its bastard American parentage, the son has long since taken over from the father.

Reviews:

Meera Syal:
‘This is a must read book for everybody interested in Bollywood — the first definitive history of the Indian film world.’

The Observer:
‘The first comprehensive history of India’s film industry is pure entertainment.’

The Sunday Times:
‘Bose brings pioneers such a Raj Kapoor vividly to life, along with many other unforgettable characters… Insightful and often hilarious, a punchy narrative.’

The Daily Telegraph:
‘The tale of Indian cinema’s germination, fuelled by visionary entrepreneurs who realised the potential of this imported entertainment and made it their own… fascinating.’

The Sunday Telegraph:
‘There can be no faulting Bose for his thoroughness, or for his enthusiasm.’

ISBN: 0-9545-7264-5
Grice Chapman Publishing (2004)
RRP: £15.95

Revised edition, previously published as The Lost Hero, a biography of Subhas Bose by Quartet Books Ltd (1982)

Fifty-five years on, the truth comes out. India's fight for independence had little to do with love and non-violence. It involved terrorism and torture, spies who double-crossed their spymasters, and the brutal suppression by the British Raj of the one man they feared — Subhas Bose. Twice he escaped, once on foot and by mule across the rugged, inhospitable landscape of Afghanistan, and then — just as Allied special forces closed in at the end of World War II — by Japanese bomber which crashed mysteriously in Taiwan.

Today Subhas Bose remains highly controversial. In India he is superhero, and hundreds of thousands commemorate his birthday. Many British historians think otherwise, portraying Bose as a quisling of the Nazis.

In this absorbing new biography, Mihir Bose (no relation) ignores 'history wars' and uses previously secret documents to describe Bose's meetings with Hitler and Mussolini and his attempts to persuade the Axis powers to invade India to rid it of the Raj. Raj, Secrets, Revolution also describes Bose's secret marriage to an Austrian Fraulein — with previously unpublished information from Anita, their daughter — and his wartime journey back to Asia by U-boats to form his Japanese-backed revolutionary army and government-in-exile. What would have happened had Bose been successful?

ISBN: 0-9538-7960-7
World Memon Foundation (2000)
RRP: £18.99

It has been said pity 'the land without history, so woe be the people without historians'.

Little over a hundred years ago, the Memons were virtually unknown to the wider world. Hardly anything seemed to distinguish them from the various communities that make up the Indian sub-continent. Today they are one of the most powerful business communities in the region.

The Memons are people with a rich, colourful past but without any historians to record it, let alone analyse or laud the achievements of their ancestors. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, so historians abhor a historical vacuum and tend to fill it with myths and prejudices. Until now the Memons have taken a view of history not dissimilar to the one Napoleon took. Asked by one of his generals about the impact one of his battle plans would have on history, Napoleon is believed to have said: 'Let us make history first then let historians write it.’

The Memons have been making history for generations but now find themselves subject to other people's interpretations of their history. Mohamed Aly Rangoonwala, the wise and kindly man who headed the World Memon Foundation until his death in 1998 and who decided to commission this history, set a simple task: 'Tell us and tell others who the Memons are. We are not just a rapacious business community. Nor are we to be confused with the Mormons of America. We need to know, our children and grandchildren need to know where their ancestors came from and what they did. We would also like to share this information and knowledge with others'.

This is the task of this book: addressed as much to Memons themselves as to
non-Memons.

ISBN: 0-2339-9281-2
Andre Deutsch Ltd (1997)
RRP: No longer in print (available second-hand)

Terry Venables is the great enigma of English football. A man surrounded by controversy, he appears to have the capacity to survive anything and everything. As a player he seemed destined for greatness, representing England at all levels, but never quite became the star he might have been. As a manager he proved that English coaching ideas and theories could work abroad, particularly in the wholly different atmosphere of Spain, where he was an exceptionally successful leader of Barcelona. He also became that very rare football animal, an ex-player and manager who also became an owner via his controversial acquisition, with Alan Sugar, of Spurs. He went on to become the coach for the English national side and has been seen by many as the saviour of our national game.

However, behind this public facade, deliberately created by himself, of the cheeky Cockney chappie always capable of reinventing himself, lurks a very different and infinitely more complex man whose business deals have left an apparently endless trail of writs and inquiries. Venables' activities have prompted two television programmes, as well as a DTI investigation.

The author has gone behind the facade and the brilliantly self-projected image to present this riveting portrayal. Based on extensive research, particularly since Venables' involvement with Spurs, Bose's book paints a picture of a man far removed from the somewhat facile image so familiar on the back pages of newspapers and on radio and television. Bose's remarkable research and spirited writing show a side of English football not previously revealed.

Review:

Daily Mail — December 18, 1996 Neil Harman:
‘… a masterpiece of investigative journalism by Mihir Bose. It needs someone with the author’s meticulous mind to even attempt to unravel the complex business dealings which have so cluttered Venables life.’

ISBN: 1-8522-7208-2
Virgin Books (1992)
RRP: No longer in print (available second-hand)

Michael Grade is one of the most colourful and controversial figures in British broadcasting. The red braces, flamboyant style and `family' cigar typify a man whose career has, by any standards, been dazzlingly successful. He is at the peak of his profession. All who know him speak of his ready wit, immense charm and mastery of the one-liner. Even his critics admit it: Michael is fun.

Yet critics there are. To some broadcasting insiders Michael Grade's achievements are questionable. He has, they say, never made a programme in his life. His appointment at Channel 4 was greeted with horror by insiders who accused him of dragging ITV and the BBC downmarket and feared the same for their channel. He is dismissed as a self-publicist whose best work builds on the achievements of others.

Grade's personal life, like his career, has been punctuated by controversy and unhappiness. Abandoned by a mother of whom he never speaks, twice divorced, and alienated from a sister to whom he has not spoken for 20 years, his personal life betrays the complexity of the man.

Michael Grade — Screening the Image examines the man behind the myth. A man whose achievements are undeniable, but a man driven by the need to match the success achieved by his uncles — Lew Grade and Bernie Delfont — and whose fame appears never to have given him what he seeks.

The Lost Hero

ISBN: 0-7043-2301-X
Quartet Books (1982)
RRP: No longer in print (available second-hand)

No account of the history of Indian independence can be complete without the man who opposed Gandhi, was a bitter rival of Nehru and waged war against Mountbatten — Subhas Chandra Bose (no relation). This is his story and that of the alternative, violent revolutionary struggle for Indian independence — one that often paralleled that non-violent one and occasionally threatened to overwhelm it. Rational, practical and freedom-mad, as he urged every Indian to be, Bose was anathema to both the Congress Raj and the British Raj. His supporters, on the other hand, went to the other extreme, magnifying his virtues and completely obscuring his faults.