Lawrence James is fast establishing himself as the leading modern commentator on the rise and fall of the British Empire. Indeed, his last book covered that enormous topic in one volume, while his previous books have looked at the Crimea, small wars, Lawrence of Arabia, and Viscount Allenby. Clearly not scared of the grand theme, his latest is 'Raj; The Making and Unmaking of British India' (Little Brown, Brettenham House, Lancaster Place, London, WC2E 7EN. ISBN: 0-31664072-7. Price 25.00 pounds).

This attempts a single-volume history of the British Empire in India, from the freewheeling, filibustering days of Clive and John Company, right through to Mountbatten, partition, and 'freedom at midnight'. This is an enormous subject, fraught with all manner of contextual and cultural complications, but James tackles it with gusto, in a style which sweeps grandly through the tales of great men, political adventurism and battles without ever losing sight of the more subtle, and less easily contained, backdrop of changing social and economic interaction.

The accounts of the great wars - from Plassey and the wars of conquest, through the Sikh Wars and Mutiny, and on to WWsl and 2 are crisp and lively enough, but one of the great delights is James' exploration of changing British attitudes towards India, and vice versa. The Company's officials in the eighteenth century were men accustomed to taking risks on their own initiative, opportunists who were not burdened by the weight of over-blown theories of racial superiority which characterised the Raj after the Mutiny, and who therefore mixed more freely with Indians than their counterparts in a century later.

The shifting relationship between rulers and ruled - whether they be political, military, economic, or sexual make for fascinating reading, and are a timely reminder that there was a lot more going on in the Raj than the stiff formal portraits of the 1890s might suggest. Indeed, James' uses of contemporary popular fiction - novels, plays, poetry, and more recently film - is particularly effective as a mirror of contemporary British attitudes towards her Indian possessions. "The past", as somebody smart once said, "is another country; they do things differently there". The India of the Raj - and indeed Britain of the Empire - are now very different countries, but James does not shy away from attempting a balanced assessment of the triumphs and failures, the strengths and iniquities, of British rule. 'Raj' is an enviable achievement, and as a comprehensive history, unlikely to be bettered.

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