These memoirs were discovered in the 1950s when the author's grandson was sifting material for Philip Mason's The Men Who Ruled India. Beames arrived in the sub-continent just after the Mutiny, and stayed for the next thirty-five years. Unlike most diarists of the Victorian Raj, he was completely outspoken and wrote plain lively prose. The result is probably the most vivid description of a District Officer's life in India.