Books: Scrutiny of a Mutiny

THE RED FORT (383 pp.)—James Leasor—Reynal ($5).

As history is written it seems only a long minute since the great subcontinent of India was ruled by a unique commercial enterprise called the East India Company. A century ago that rule came to a bloody end with the Indian Mutiny. In a splendid narrative, British Newsman James Leasor has brought a bewilderingly confused mass of material into focus where it belongs—on the Red Fort of Delhi and the old walled city where the last of the Moguls sat in splendor and squalor amid his treasure,...