A biography of Indira Gandhi, this deals with her unhappy "love-marriage" to Feroze, the ambivalent influence of her father and her relationship with her sons. It traces the evolution from "Dumb Doll" to "Empress of India", her downfall, the roots of which were sown in the Summer of Emergency in 1975, and ultimate assassination following the raid on the Sikh Golden Temple in 1984. As well as being a study of a mysterious personality, once the world's most powerful woman about whom there is hardly a neutral opinion in India, it is also a study of the country after independence. The author was Indian correspondent for "The Guardian" from the mid-1960s to 1978 and until 1986 Resident Editor of "The Times of India" in Delhi.