100 books like Courting India

By Nandini Das,

Here are 100 books that Courting India fans have personally recommended if you like Courting India. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606

Susan Doran Author Of From Tudor to Stuart: The Regime Change from Elizabeth I to James I

From my list on the reigns of James VI of Scotland and I of England.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a Professor of early-modern British History at the University of Oxford and a Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, who was a specialist in the Tudor period, especially the life and reign of Elizabeth I. However, while doing research over the past six years, I became excited by the politics, religion, and culture of the Jacobean period. James I’s reign had been a topic I taught in a week to undergraduates, but I realised that I didn’t do justice to this rich and important period. Not only is it fascinating in its own right, but James’s reign had a huge impact on a long stretch of British and world history.

Susan's book list on the reigns of James VI of Scotland and I of England

Susan Doran Why did Susan love this book?

I love this book because it combines history and literature, doing justice to both. By setting Lear and Macbeth in their cultural and political contexts, Professor Shapiro has given me new insights into both plays. Before seeing them again, I’ll go back to this book.

Shapiro is a model for me of an academic historian who successfully addresses a wider audience by avoiding academic jargon, explaining the unfamiliar, and telling a good story. He wears his great scholarship lightly, but he has done a huge amount of research and has a mastery of his subject.

By James Shapiro,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Year of Lear as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Preeminent Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro, author of Shakespeare in a Divided America, shows how the tumultuous events in 1606 influenced three of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies written that year—King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. “The Year of Lear is irresistible—a banquet of wisdom” (The New York Times Book Review).

In the years leading up to 1606, Shakespeare’s great productivity had ebbed. But that year, at age forty-two, he found his footing again, finishing a play he had begun the previous autumn—King Lear—then writing two other great tragedies, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra.

It was a memorable year in England as…


Book cover of The Lost Prince: The Life & Death of Henry Stuart

Susan Doran Author Of From Tudor to Stuart: The Regime Change from Elizabeth I to James I

From my list on the reigns of James VI of Scotland and I of England.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a Professor of early-modern British History at the University of Oxford and a Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, who was a specialist in the Tudor period, especially the life and reign of Elizabeth I. However, while doing research over the past six years, I became excited by the politics, religion, and culture of the Jacobean period. James I’s reign had been a topic I taught in a week to undergraduates, but I realised that I didn’t do justice to this rich and important period. Not only is it fascinating in its own right, but James’s reign had a huge impact on a long stretch of British and world history.

Susan's book list on the reigns of James VI of Scotland and I of England

Susan Doran Why did Susan love this book?

I love exhibition catalogues. They are usually lavishly illustrated with expert explanations of the visuals. I can dip into them at will, especially when I’m too tired for a major investment of time in reading.

This one is particularly fine as its production values are high and the explanations lengthy. Prince Henry, the son of James VI and I, who died suddenly in November 1610 at the age of eighteen, was, like his mother, Queen Anna, a patron of music, paintings, masques, architecture, and gardens. These interests are amply revealed in the fascinating pictures and text of this wonderful catalogue. 

By Catharine MacLeod,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Lost Prince as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This exploration of Henry's life and image, and the extraordinary reaction to his death, transforms our understanding of this exceptional prince and the time in which he lived. In November 1612, shortly before his nineteenth birthday, Henry, the eldest son of James I and Anne of Denmark, died of typhoid fever after a short illness. The nation was struck by grief at the loss of this most promising prince who, it was believed, would become a king to transform Britain. Unlike his father, Henry was seen as militaristic, ardently Protestant and fiercely moral; he was also a precocious patron of…


Book cover of Rebellion: Britain's First Stuart Kings, 1567-1642

Susan Doran Author Of From Tudor to Stuart: The Regime Change from Elizabeth I to James I

From my list on the reigns of James VI of Scotland and I of England.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a Professor of early-modern British History at the University of Oxford and a Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, who was a specialist in the Tudor period, especially the life and reign of Elizabeth I. However, while doing research over the past six years, I became excited by the politics, religion, and culture of the Jacobean period. James I’s reign had been a topic I taught in a week to undergraduates, but I realised that I didn’t do justice to this rich and important period. Not only is it fascinating in its own right, but James’s reign had a huge impact on a long stretch of British and world history.

Susan's book list on the reigns of James VI of Scotland and I of England

Susan Doran Why did Susan love this book?

A good textbook is indispensable, and this is the one on James I that I most often resort to. It is lucidly written, covers an awful lot of ground, is properly referenced, and offers an in-depth look at the reigns of James VI and I and Charles I in England and Scotland.

Although it is ten years old now, I still place it top of my reading list for undergraduates studying this period of history. 

By Tim Harris,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Rebellion as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A gripping new account of one of the most important and exciting periods of British and Irish history: the reign of the first two Stuart kings, from 1567 to the outbreak of civil war in 1642 - and why ultimately all three of their kingdoms were to rise in rebellion against Stuart rule.

Both James VI and I and his son Charles I were reforming monarchs, who endeavoured to bolster the authority of the crown and bring the churches in their separate kingdoms into closer harmony with one another. Many of James's initiatives proved controversial - his promotion of the…


Book cover of Anna of Denmark: The Material and Visual Culture of the Stuart Courts, 1589-1619

Susan Doran Author Of From Tudor to Stuart: The Regime Change from Elizabeth I to James I

From my list on the reigns of James VI of Scotland and I of England.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a Professor of early-modern British History at the University of Oxford and a Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, who was a specialist in the Tudor period, especially the life and reign of Elizabeth I. However, while doing research over the past six years, I became excited by the politics, religion, and culture of the Jacobean period. James I’s reign had been a topic I taught in a week to undergraduates, but I realised that I didn’t do justice to this rich and important period. Not only is it fascinating in its own right, but James’s reign had a huge impact on a long stretch of British and world history.

Susan's book list on the reigns of James VI of Scotland and I of England

Susan Doran Why did Susan love this book?

I like to get stuck into specialized studies to extend and deepen my historical knowledge. This recent monograph, based on research in Denmark, England, and Scotland, taught me a great deal about how Queen Anna used visual and material culture to forge her own identity and bring prestige to the Jacobean monarchy.

I very much enjoyed reading Field’s descriptions of Anna’s clothes, jewelry, and collecting practices, all of which displayed the queen’s pan-European identity and interests. As a scholar, I am particularly interested in the public image of kings and queens, so this book greatly appealed to me. 

By Jemma Field,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Anna of Denmark as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Approaching the Stuart courts through the lens of the queen consort, Anna of Denmark, this study is underpinned by three key themes: translating cultures, female agency and the role of kinship networks and genealogical identity for early modern royal women. Illustrated with a fascinating array of objects and artworks, the book follows a trajectory that begins with Anna's exterior spaces before moving to the interior furnishings of her palaces, the material adornment of the royal body, an examination of Anna's visual persona and a discussion of Anna's performance of extraordinary rituals that follow her life cycle. Underpinned by a wealth…


Book cover of Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India

Alan Mercel-Sanca Author Of Nepal - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture

From my list on people learning about each other's cultures.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an intercultural educationalist, having many years of direct Prime Ministers, Culture Ministers, Ambassador of Nepal to the UK/Ireland/Malta, experts, and grassroots community organizations relationships with Nepal and Nepali diasporas (UK and Ireland) regarding research, reports, and major intercultural projects, as well as a published writer on Nepali culture and editor and lead content contributor for internationally respected online Nepal culture information resources (see Nepali Cultural Heritage and Foods of Nepal). An active member of the decolonization movement, I have provided live BBC TV News interviews on the UK Government–Gurkha dispute and led the enablement of a historically important Nepal–England football match. 

Alan's book list on people learning about each other's cultures

Alan Mercel-Sanca Why did Alan love this book?

This book is among the most informative and inspiring books ever. The subject treats–the Indian subcontinent’s experience (comparable to that of Ireland) of profit-seeking ‘entrepreneurs’ [especially the predatory East India Company] backed by British governments and opportunistic Western/Christian evangelical forces [giving ‘religious/moral’ ‘justification’ to foreign invasion, occupation and related apartheid type instituted rule–provides need to know detail for those in the West [UK] in an age where those wilfully or through ignorance of the facts are attached to supremacist nostalgic ‘Brexit’ views of yesteryear colonialism as benign, are still poorly challenged.

I am honored to be recognized as a member of the decolonization movement. This book is compelling and deserves mandatory inclusion in world history curricula. 

By Shashi Tharoor,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Inglorious Empire as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Sunday Times Top 10 bestseller on India's experience of British colonialism, by the internationally-acclaimed author and diplomat Shashi Tharoor

'Tharoor's impassioned polemic slices straight to the heart of the darkness that drives all empires ... laying bare the grim, and high, cost of the British Empire for its former subjects. An essential read' Financial Times

In the eighteenth century, India's share of the world economy was as large as Europe's. By 1947, after two centuries of British rule, it had decreased six-fold. The Empire blew rebels from cannon, massacred unarmed protesters, entrenched institutionalised racism, and caused millions to die…


Book cover of Statecraft by Stealth: Secret Intelligence and British Rule in Palestine

David P. Oakley Author Of Subordinating Intelligence: The DoD/CIA Post-Cold War Relationship

From my list on history, personalities, activities of intelligence.

Why am I passionate about this?

My fascination with intelligence studies is tied to my previous experience as a practitioner. While serving as a military officer and CIA officer, I became curious about how two organizations with a shared history could be so different. Exploring the “why” of the CIA/DoD differences led me to the broader interplay of organizational cultures, individuals, and missions in influencing the evolution of intelligence, its purpose, and its role. These five books will provide the reader a broader appreciation of how intelligence was used to help policymakers understand reality and how intelligence organizations have been used to try to change reality. You will not merely learn something about intelligence but will be entertained and engaged while doing so. 

David's book list on history, personalities, activities of intelligence

David P. Oakley Why did David love this book?

The relationship between intelligence and policy and how various countries employ intelligence organizations are two important topics that are not fully explored. Wagner’s book looks at the role played by British intelligence in Palestine during the interwar period---a role that went beyond what many consider intelligence functions. As Wagner explains, British intelligence not only informed policymakers’ thinking but was also involved in the execution of policy in the Palestinian territory during this period. This combined, no better yet intertwined, history of British policy and intelligence during this important period is something that intelligence and regional scholars should read. 

By Steven B. Wagner,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Statecraft by Stealth as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Britain relied upon secret intelligence operations to rule Mandatory Palestine. Statecraft by Stealth sheds light on a time in history when the murky triad of intelligence, policy, and security supported colonial governance. It emphasizes the role of the Anglo-Zionist partnership, which began during World War I and ended in 1939, when Britain imposed severe limits on Jewish immigration and settlement in Palestine.

Steven Wagner argues that although the British devoted considerable attention to intelligence gathering and analysis, they never managed to solve the basic contradiction of their rule: a dual commitment to democratic self-government and to the Jewish national home…


Book cover of A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

Patricia Goldstone Author Of Aaronsohn's Maps: The Man Who Might Have Created Peace in the Modern Middle East

From my list on changing discussions about the modern Middle East.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been fascinated by the Middle East ever since being taken to see Kismet at the age of 3. I travel there extensively, married into it, and have lived inside the Middle East community in the US for the past thirty years. I’m also a journalist, a playwright, and the author of three non-fiction books, Making the World Safe for Tourism, Aaronsohn’s Maps, and INTERLOCK: Art, Conspiracy, and The Shadow Worlds of Mark Lombardi. Although I wouldn't argue that the issue of women’s rights isn't an urgent one, as a woman who focuses on history and geopolitics, I’m often disturbed at how it's being used to whip up popular emotion and obscure other driving forces. 

Patricia's book list on changing discussions about the modern Middle East

Patricia Goldstone Why did Patricia love this book?

Like Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August to which this compares in the breadth of scope and depth of knowledge, this is a huge, rich feast of a book and one of the best you can read on World War I as well as on the formative geopolitics of the modern Middle East. Like the greatest of the imperial geographers, David’s scholarship was omnivorous but his original discipline was law: his discussion of the rashly-drawn boundaries that are at the heart of A Peace to End All Peace is without peer.

Full disclosure: David was also a friend who, like his book, was incredibly generous. I owe my book to a particularly compendious footnote in A Peace to End All Peace. It caught my eye and I became obsessed with why I didn’t know more about such an enormous presence, eventually traveling to Britain, France, Israel, and the Isle…

By David Fromkin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Peace to End All Peace as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An up-to-date analysis of the historical background to the divisions of the Arab world. For politics students and the general reader.


Book cover of Guilty Men

Simon Adams Author Of Eyewitness Titanic

From my list on major events that changed the 20th century.

Why am I passionate about this?

I only ever enjoyed one subject at school, and that was history. I read history books for pleasure, and then studied the subject at university, along with politics. As an adult, I worked in publishing and then began to write history books for myself, books to be read by both children and adults. History has remained my passion all my life, and the five books I have chosen here are just some of the many fine history books that deal with the major events of the recent 20th century. I hope you enjoy my selection.

Simon's book list on major events that changed the 20th century

Simon Adams Why did Simon love this book?

In May 1940, as Britain fought for its survival against Nazi Germany, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigned to be replaced by the determined and forceful Winston Churchill. Chamberlain had been the face of appeasement, negotiating peace with the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in the hope of buying him off. Many felt that he had brought Britain to the brink of disaster. Two months later three journalistsMichael Foot, Peter Howard, Frank Owen—writing anonymously as Cato, published this scathing attack on Chamberlain and the other appeasers, naming and shaming the guilty men responsible for betraying their country.

By Cato,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Guilty Men as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In his preface to the 1998 reissue, Michael Foot wrote, 'Guilty Men was conceived by three London journalists who had formed the habit of meeting on the roof of the Evening Standard offices in Shoe Lane, Fleet Street, just after the the afternoon paper had been put to bed and, maybe, just before the Two Brewers opened across the road.'

The book's genesis and publication could hardly have been swifter. Its writing took four days from the 1st to the 4th June 1940: it was published on the 5th July. It is an angry book, indeed, a devastatingly effective polemic.…


Book cover of The Thirties

Dorian Lynskey Author Of The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell's 1984

From my list on totalitarianism not written by George Orwell.

Why am I passionate about this?

In The Ministry of Truth, I wanted to bring together two longstanding interests: dystopian fiction and the history of totalitarianism. Nineteen Eighty-Four is of course a landmark work in both categories. In trying to explain how and why Orwell came to write his masterpiece, and its subsequent influence on fiction and political thought, I read a huge range of books that wrestled with the horrors of Nazism and Stalinism and asked how they were able to hold sway, physically and mentally, over tens of millions of people. Many of them are gripping and valuable but these five in particular make for great companions to 1984.

Dorian's book list on totalitarianism not written by George Orwell

Dorian Lynskey Why did Dorian love this book?

As The Guardian’s Moscow correspondent, Muggeridge exposed Stalin’s man-made famine in 1933; in the 1940s, he became one of Orwell’s closest friends. In between the two, he conducted this caustic post mortem on a catastrophic decade. Some of it still feels timely, like his observation that a cultural obsession with information perversely incentivises the manipulation and fabrication of data. All of it is deliciously quotable: he compares the human rights activists who whitewashed Stalinism to “vegetarians undertaking a pious pilgrimage to a slaughterhouse because it displayed a notice recommending nut-cutlets.”

By Malcolm Muggeridge,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Thirties as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In covering the turbulent 1930s, Muggeridge starts by surveying the events that filled the decade and gave it a special character and closes with a description of the outbreak of World War II. 10 cassettes.


Book cover of The Long Peace Process: The United States of America and Northern Ireland, 1960-2008

Michael Tubridy Author Of An Irish Passion for Justice: The Life of Rebel New York Attorney Paul O'Dwyer

From my list on Irish-American rebel attorney Paul O’Dwyer.

Why am I passionate about this?

At Columbia University (where, incidentally, I became friends with Rob) I took two 19th-century American history undergraduate courses that featured dramatic lectures on Irish emigrants, the group that served as a prototype for subsequent immigrants from other nations. The books I have listed here gave me a deeper, more complicated view of the experiences of people like my Irish Catholic ancestors on both sides of my family. I find today’s harangues on social media and cable news woefully deficient in helping to understand forces like nativism, the influence of religion on public figures, and the harrowing adjustments to American life by emerging ethnic and racial groups.

Michael's book list on Irish-American rebel attorney Paul O’Dwyer

Michael Tubridy Why did Michael love this book?

For the longest time, I have wanted to better comprehend the winding and complex years-long road to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the multi-party accord, which, with the US government serving as an international peace broker, ended decades of sectarian and state violence at the end of Paul O’Dwyer’s life.

This lucid and objective scholarly account helped me grasp how O’Dwyer and a cadre of fellow grassroots organizers managed in 1992 to elicit a public vow from Bill Clinton to appoint a US envoy to Northern Ireland, with Clinton making good on the promise during his presidency. 

By Andrew Sanders,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Long Peace Process as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book examines the role of the United States of America in the Northern Ireland conflict and peace process. It begins by looking at how US figures engaged with Northern Ireland, as well as the wider issue of Irish partition, in the years before the outbreak of what became known as the 'Troubles'. From there, it considers early interventions on the part of Congressional figures such as Senator Edward Kennedy and the Congressional hearings on Northern Ireland that took place in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, 1972. The author then analyses the causes and consequences of the State Department decision…


Book cover of The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606
Book cover of The Lost Prince: The Life & Death of Henry Stuart
Book cover of Rebellion: Britain's First Stuart Kings, 1567-1642

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