Send Malcolm - The Life of Major-General Sir John Malcolm

Major-General Sir John Malcolm, better known in his time and in the echoes of later nineteenth-century nostalgia as 'Boy Malcolm', was born in 1769, at Eskdale in Dumfrieshire, the seventh of the seventeen children of a farmer, the grandson of a minister. He died in 1833, celebrated at home and abroad, as soldier, writer, administrator, expert on the Persian language and culture, ex-Governor of Bombay, and associate of Wellesley and Wellington. His statue, by Chantrey, stands in Westminster Abbey, looking fierce; he was a big man and an ebullient companion, hence his nickname. With a strong Scottish accent, no money and only a village school education, he was despatched to India at thirteen to see fortune, experience and manhood: in seeking them so successfully after such an early and hazardous start, he was simply an extreme example of a type familiar in the annals of the creation of Imperial India. He was not a unique person, nor even a highly original one; merely a particularly splendid example of a type extraordinarily well-fitted to a certain time and situation. Herein lies much of the charm and interest of this biographical study, the first for over a century.