{"product_id":"teatime-at-peggy-s-book-clare-jenkins-9781804692424","title":"Teatime at Peggy's","description":"For 15 years, award-winning travel writer Stephen McClarence and his BBC Radio journalist wife Clare Jenkins made a series of journeys through India to learn about one of its most eccentric and fast-dwindling communities: the Anglo-Indians. Mainly descendants of British men and Indian women, their combined heritage stretches back 350 years through the times of the East India Company and the British Raj. In Jhansi - a railway hub in the state of Uttar Pradesh and inspiration for John Masters's 1950s book Bhowani Junction - the Anglo-Indian community is reduced to around 30 families. Teatime at Peggy's shares their stories.  Inspired by Jenkins' own Anglo-Indian family connections, the couple immersed themselves in the customs of this little-known dimension to India, soon developing a profound affection for their new friends, particularly for two of the area's most memorable figureheads: the title character 'Aunty Peggy', daughter and widow of railwaymen, overseer of the European cemetery, and 'friend of the great and the good, the rich and the poor'; and Captain Roy Abbott, the last British landowner in India, who never dined without wearing a blazer, cravat and immaculately pressed trousers.  The authors spent hours at Peggy's kitchen table - eating cake, samosas and curry; drinking tea; welcoming eccentric characters, like Pastor Rao who could recite Winston Churchill speeches from memory; listening to stories, told in lilting accents, of the Railway Institute and May Queen Balls, Monsoon Toad Balls (where 'the ugliest, most hideous-looking man' would win the prize), waltzes and foxtrots, dancing in the jungle to Victor Silvester gramophone records, games of rummy and housey-housey, and Anglo-Indian cookery that embraced plum cake, goat's brain curry, Mulligatawny soup and crème caramel.   Warm, humorous and evocative, Teatime at Peggy's is a lyrical, loving homage to the Anglo-Indians. Filled with larger-than-life characters and with the ever-present exhilaration of 21st-century India, it is both intimate and revelatory, and a testament to the importance of tradition, community and friendship. This enchanting book is for anyone who knows India well - or who simply yearns to take the 'trip of a lifetime' to the 'sub-continent'. and see things a little differently.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49778405802257,"sku":"NGR9781804692424","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50525123281169,"sku":"GOR013984706","price":5.5,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53269973303569,"sku":"GOR014848768","price":5.8,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1804692425.jpg?v=1750994380","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/products\/teatime-at-peggy-s-book-clare-jenkins-9781804692424","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}