Freedom at Midnight: Inspiration for the major motion picture Viceroy's House

Description

The electrifying story of India's struggle for independence, told in this classic account by two fine journalists who conducted hundreds of interviews with nearly all the surviving participants - from Mountbatten to the assassins of Mahatma Gandhi. On 14 August 1947 one-fifth of humanity claimed their independence from the greatest empire history has ever seen. But 400 million people were to find that the immediate price of freedom was partition and war, riot and murder. In this superb reconstruction, Collins and Lapierre recount the eclipse of the fabled British Raj and examine the roles enacted by, among others, Mahatma Gandhi and Lord Mountbatten in its violent transformation into the new India and Pakistan. This is the India of Jawaharlal Nehru, heart-broken by the tragedy of the country's division; of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, a Moslem who drank, ate pork and rarely entered a mosque, yet led 45 million Moselms to nationhood; of Gandhi, who stirred a subcontinent without raising his voice; of the last viceroy, Mountbatten, beseeched by the leaders of an independent India to take back the powers he'd just passed to them.

Larry Collins was born in West Hartford, Connecticut. After graduating from the Loomis School and Yale University, he served in the US Army at SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers, Europe) outside Paris, where he met Dominique Lapierre, with whom his name is associated in five major international bestsellers. Collins later became a journalist with United Press International in Paris, Rome and the Middle East, where he joined Newsweek as its Middle East correspondent in 1958. During the course of two turbulent years, he covered ten coup d'etats or violent upheavals in his area and was described in national advertising by his employers as "the correspondent who always managed to be in a country just as a revolution or coup d'etat was about to break out - including one in the Dominican Republic when he was supposed to be on vacation." In April 1961, he returned to Paris as the Newsweek Bureau Chief. During his Newsweek years, his cover story subjects included the Shah of Iran, Charles DeGaulle, Fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and the death of Pope John XXIII. In the summer of 1962, Larry teamed up with Dominique Lapierre on the first of their internationally known bestsellers - Is Paris Burning?, which was followed by four others, all fantastically successful. Larry has subsequently written three others bestsellers, equally as successful, and his most current, Tomorrow Belongs To Us is published in March. Larry Collins is an avid skier and tennis player. He and his wife have two grown up sons and divide their time between properties in London, France and the US.

'Thrilling... staggers the imagination' Daily Mail 'A vast and complex canvas... rich in vivid details' Sunday Times 'The song of India... illuminated in scenes like a pageant' Time