Ranji Maharajah of Connemara

Indian Prince Ranjitsinghji was the most famous cricket-player of his generation. In 1924, the inhabitants of Connemara, on the west coast of Ireland, were amazed when this exotic stranger fell in love with Ballynahinch Castle and decided to move in. Using rare documents from government and personal archives, private photographs and personal stories from people who knew or worked for The Ranji as they called him, biographer Anne Chambers, brings this intriguing story to light for the first time. She reveals the reasons behind Ranji’s strange decision, and looks at the fascinating legacy the Maharaja left behind. While this biography focuses on Ranji’s association with Ireland, the research also unearthed evidence of the troubled and darker side of this Indian autocrat, in relation to his connections with the state of Nawanagar and with the British Raj: his spendthrift ways; his indebtedness; his manipulation of his state’s finances; his political inflexibility; his addiction to western life, at the expense of his duty, which made him become a virtual absentee ruler in his own state; and his eventual alienation from the Empire to which he had given such unswerving loyalty. And while Ireland, for a time, became his escape from the political and financial troubles that haunted him in India and in England, in the end even his beloved Cinerama could not shield Ranji from the inevitable.