Roo Borson reviews Glimpses of World History by Jawaharlal Nehru
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r"I do not know when or where these
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begins Glimpses of World Historyfa volume of collected! letters [written originally for
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^inglereaderfthe daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, by Nehru himself. Though it is also easy, with a figure like Nehru, to imagine him writing intimate letters to his daughter all the while feeling History looking over>his shoulder - just as it is hard to imagine Virginia Woolf setting down her neat turns of wit in the diaries without Literary History in mind. Nonetheless these "glimpses," being addressed to a single reader, are
; in effect addressed to every single reader: Nehru takes you by the hand on every paae as though you werer'his little daughter, and shows you the wide world bit by bit
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beginning withlhe beginnings of life on Earth and ending near the ends of the earth, j
or at least one of its endings: the fearsome politics leading into World War Ü.fThe f« «
lettersjwere written from various prisonsjwhere Nehru was allowed almost no contact 1
with hk family, which accounts for some of the intimacy of the tone; the rest
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accquntedVor not only by fatherly feeling but by Nehru's situation: he was one of the
rare figures Xyho, by predilection, intellect and position, was able - literally in the world as well ak in words - to compose world history and hand it on to his daughter.
He lived, unlike most of us, in a society that he had a hand in shaping; so-called "current events" were intimate to him, and their being so made all of the past, and all possible futures, personal affairs.
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The collection of {letters [was revised for publication|but retains the mood of
being spoken lovingly to one person, lit is remarkable as a "history" in part because it
presupposes no historical knowledge on the part of the reader - meant, as it was, as an educational introduction to the political history of the world for one who had only
recently entered it, told in the form of true stories by a father to a daughter. I The preface to the original English edition is dated January 1, 1934; the copy I grew up with was published in the US in 1942, bought used, and bears the inscription "Happy New Year, 1947" from my mother to my father, as my family was beginning its postwar life, when I was not yet born, and in a time when "to-day" was not yet written as a sinsle word.
Ondaatje, M., Redhill, M., Spalding, E, & Spalding, L.  (Eds.)(2001) Lost Classics. London: Bioomsburv.