Anita Anand For the record

She has a popular podcast, Empire, with William Dalrymple; three books on India’s entwined history with Britain and a fourth one in the works. For too long, colonisers depicted themselves as heroes and Indians were in the backdrop of their own story, says the British historian of Indian origin. She’s now unearthing forgotten tales, placing new heroes and heroines in the spotlight

Vanessa Viegas and Tanisha Saxena drew attention around the world. In February this year, the British charity English Heritage announced that it will officially take note of Singh’s contribution, dedicating one of its iconic blue plaques to her, so that she can be remembered among England’s most iconic suffragettes.

This is Anand’s mission, as she sees it: To serve as a record-keeper and record-corrector. It’s a role she plays in her two other books, The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge and the Raj (2019; released to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar), and Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond (2017; co-authored with Dalrymple); and in her fourth, an upcoming work on Olive Christian Malvery (1871-1914), known as the world’s first woman undercover journalist.

“She was also of Indian origin. She exposed the terrible practices in work offices, factories, markets and anywhere women were employed and exploited. She was brave, intrepid and everything I like in a character,” Anand says.

While there are several things about being British that one can be proud of, “for me it is vital to bring the other side of the story into the bright sunlight,” she says. “Historically, the ugly parts of colonialism aren’t mentioned. The British are shown as the heroes and the Indians were in the backdrop like furniture.”

Anand works to tell the stories of some of those people in the backdrop, and to look at all the people in the scene anew, to examine what motivated them, what made them who they were.

This is what makes Koh-i-Noor such a compelling read. One sees a different side to Shah Jahan, the great emperor so distraught over the death of his wife Mumtaz Mahal that he spends a fortune making a unique pair of emerald-lensed spectacles, believing they might bring him better fortune and protect his health.

“History isn’t just about dates and events. It’s about human beings doing things to other human beings and I am completely compelled by this,” Anand says.

What’s a detail that people would be surprised to know about her?

“I have a second career acting in movies and TV dramas,” she says, laughing. “I feature as a newsreader in the 2018 Hollywood movie The Spy Who Dumped Me and in a 2019 episode of Black Mirror. I play myself in the 2022 drama series Slow Horses, about the British secret service.”

Who is her pick for most compelling personality in contemporary history? “[Swedish climate activist] Greta Thunberg, for how she has mobilised young people since she was 15,” Anand says. “This fight is not easy. She is treated so badly by her critics and yet she keeps going.”

When historians of the future look back, she adds, “I think they will not forgive us for being such poor custodians of the planet. I think they will also be astonished about this era of disinformation in a time when information is so readily available. Nobody trusts anybody at the moment and that is such a dangerous place to be. I think history books will be written about how the essential truths of our times were so easily subverted.”