The Great Hedge of India (Quest for One of the Lost Wonders of the World)

A study of a "lost wonder of the world", which was sparked off by the chance discovery in a Charing Cross bookshop of the dusty memoirs of a 19th century civil servant. It tells the remarkable story of a mighty hedge whch once spanned the Indian subcontinent, and was a bizarre monument to, and symbol of, the British Raj in India. "A customs barrier 2,300 miles long...manned by 12,000 men, and would have stretched from London to Constantinople, yet few historians mention it and most of us have never heard of it. Can anything be more astonishing?" Jan Morris