Promotion
Dr Kim Ati Wagner, a Danish-British historian of colonial India, received a peculiar email sitting in his London office in 2014. It was from an old English couple who owned The Lord Clyde pub in Kent, a county in England.
They wrote that they had discovered a human skull hidden under a bundle of unused boxes and crates in 1963. The skull was missing its lower jaw, the few remaining teeth it had were loose, and a note was found lodged in its eye socket.
The note, written in elegant 19th-century handwriting, read:
“Skull of Havildar “Alum Bheg”, 46th Regt. Bengal N. Infantry who was blown away from a gun, amongst several others of his Regt. He was a principal leader in the mutiny of 1857 & of a most ruffianly disposition. He took possession (at the head of a small party) of the road leading to the fort, to which place all the Europeans were hurrying for safety. His party surprised and killed Dr Graham shooting him in his buggy by the side of his daughter. His next v