Frederick Wilson (or ‘Hulson Sahib’ as he was called) was a nabob of the North Indian hills. A character of legend to this day in Garhwal-where he became the local raja and minted coins in his own name-Wilson was a British soldier-turned-entrepreneur who went native and whose phenomenal prosperity (by selling timber to the railways) made his India’s first timber magnate. But Wilson was much more then a successful businessman. He was, like his friend Allan Octavian Hume, an ornithologist of the fist order who contributed to Hume and Marshall’s classic Game Birds of India, Burma and Ceylon. He was a shikari who kept a meticulous record of India’s wildlife, an adept jungle man who could live off the forest, a mountaineer and traveler who made daring excursions into Tibet and the upper reaches of the Himalaya. This biography of Wilson by D.C. Kala (the labour of love which contextualizes its protagonist within the ecology of the Himalaya and the history of colonial adventure in nineteenth-century North India. A wonderfully written account of a larger-than-life character, this book will fascinate all who love a good story and the environment of the Indian hills.
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