My rating: 4 of 5 stars
“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.”
----Alfred Tennyson
Shrabani Basu, an Indian author has penned an honest memoir about a forgotten man who mattered the most in the life of Queen Victoria in her book called, Victoria & Abdul: The True Story of the Queen's Closest Confidant. Abdul Karim was just a young man when he first met the British monarch, Queen Victoria and since that day, till the day, the queen died, their friendship stayed invaluable and that reached beyond the walls of Osborne House to Buckingham Palace to India thereby creating an uproar amongst the royals and the British Empire. Very predictably, after the death of the Queen, her family erased every single proof of the Queen and her munshi's friendship, yet somehow and mostly through hard work, dedication and by miracle, author, Shrabani Basu, has successfully resurrected the forgotten Indian Muslim man who became an integral part of Queen Victoria's life through this memoir.
