All set to release her first book “Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary”, a biography of the suffragette Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, the daughter of the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire, Anand, who calls herself a feminist, says it is about one of her own heroines.
“I applaud bravery and nobility in all its forms and Sophia had it by the sackful.” She scaled her presenting duties down to the weekly Radio 4 show to have more time for research — which was just as well, given the scope of the story she was unearthing.
Her book takes in a broad and turbulent sweep of history: the Anglo-Sikh wars, the British Raj and the early years of the fight for Indian independence, the rise of the Labour Party and trade unions, and the campaign for women’s suffrage.