About the Author

Brian Mooney is a prize-winning international journalist and author of three books. He worked for Reuters for 30 years, covering events in more than 50 countries. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and awarded an American Press Club Award for his work in Poland during the Solidarity Revolution. In recent years he has worked in high-profile international PR assignments in Russia, Bangladesh and India. He has published: Breaking News (Wiley), a business book about the near-collapse of Reuters; Frontier Country (Thorogood), a light-hearted account of a walk around the borders of Essex; A Long Way for a Pizza and Shaping History (Arcturus), a study of great leaders.

Reviews

The Telegraph, Calcutta. Friday 29th July 2011 It's a pity that Frank Baines remains practically unknown here though he spent 19 years in India as soldier, "Hindu monk", columnist on The Statesman, gentleman of leisure and the "Peter Maine" of Desmond Doig's posthumously published memoirs, Look Back in Wonder. Indian readers had no chance, therefore, of testing on the touchstone of his life and actions the comment by his friend and biographer, Brian Mooney, that "he was not sympathetic to either the Indians or their new nation, and that he always said that General Dyer was right to open fire on unarmed protesters at Amritsar". Before discussing Baines's complex attitude to India, it's necessary to explain two things. First, India is not Mooney's main theme. Baines's extraordinary gypsy life is. Second, A Life Beyond the Sea is not conventional biography. It's a vivid personal account of a colourful but angular eccentric whose father was a knight but who himself was working as a labourer in London's Victoria station when his first book was published. Mooney brings Baines to life through his own writings, which can be intensely moving, like "Farewell to Dal Bahadur", the homosexual lover whose life he saved, or lyrical, like his magical evocations of Cornwall. Mooney's very useful chronology at the end introduces some order into a chaotic and carefree existence. The best read is the 40-page letter Baines wrote to a friend about cycling all the way from his Essex home to India. The journey would have been a feat for any 62-year-old man even if the letter's wit and descriptions had not established the author as at least the equal of Eric Newby and Gavin Young as a travel writer. He may even be more evocative in his ability to relate what he sees with experiences elsewhere and set them in a historical context, though the history isn't always accurate. Other chapters describe Baines's fascination with Cornwall, his snobbish pretensions, an interregnum in Sicily and the persistent struggles with themes, manuscripts, literary agents and publishers that resulted in three autobiographical works, a less successful novel and the posthumous Chindit Affair about fighting with Wingate and John Masters in Burma. His first work, Look Towards the Sea, was written in Calcutta and merited a patronizing few inches in Chanchal Sarkar's "Speaking Generally" column though it was praised effusively in Britain. Baines was not much given to dwelling on public issues. But the Byzantine and Roman ruins he saw during his cycling marathon prompted him to wonder "as Western civilization totters into senility and decay, where the new dawn is breaking and whereabouts in the world we may look for a fresh inspiration: toward China, towards Russia, towards America?" This was in 1978. India wasn't on his list because Baines saw India as "only an imitation state, simply flattered by the West with a pretence of recognition, whereas everybody knows it's only a hollow shell - " There is more in this vein, recalling Katherine Mayo and Beverley Nichols. But being fluent in Hindi and Urdu, having read the ancient Hindu and Buddhist scriptures and lived closer to the ground (third-class train to Darjeeling, ashram near Almora), he can make more incisive comments. Two are worth repeating. Baines says contemptuously that contemporary Indians have no connection with "Rig-Vedic or Upanishadic culture". Another value judgment is that many Indians "whine and cringe when they feel they are inferior, and are ruthlessly arrogant when they feel they are on top". If the first is self-evident in today's urban elite, the second is at once clear when one sees how high officers often conduct themselves with ministers and their clerks. Like many Kipling heroes, Baines is most comfortable with uneducated Indians. Drunk on adulation (laced with raki) in a Kurseong bustee, he says he could have stayed there for the rest of his life. "I think I would have been happy there." Despite this endearing confession or his perspicacity, he doesn't come through as what would be called a nice man. Mooney's sparing prose doesn't try to build him up either. But at least Baines is honest enough to know why he finds India comfortable. "As an old man, an Englishman and an ex-officer of the defunct Raj, I occupy a privileged position which I would never have in England." There's the secret of what Paul Scott called "staying on". SUNANDA K. DATTA-RAY