 This is Bradlaugh Hall in Lahore, once the city's main venue for nationalist rallies. It's where Freda Bedi first spoke at a political rally in (undivided) India.
I visited the hall this week, in part to pay homage to Freda and the nationalist tradition of which she was part. Bradlaugh Hall is an imposing and historic building. It was sad to see it in such a state of dilapidation. I've blogged about Bradlaugh Hall here: https://www.andrewwhitehead.net/blog/paying-homage-at-lahores-bradlaugh-hall
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 It's wonderful to see The Lives of Freda on sale in Lahore - even if I had to carry in copies of the book myself. I was there last weekend for ThinkFest which included a launch of the biography in the city which was Freda's home for thirteen years - the place where she was jailed as a nationalist, and where one of her sons, Kabir, was born. Among those at the launch was Viennese woman who, in a sense, followed in Freda's footsteps. She met her Punjabi husband while a student in the UK and came to live in Lahore in the early 1960s. Also present was a grandson of Abdul Samad Khan Achakzai, a Baluch nationalist leader from NWFP, who features alongside Freda in a historic group photograph taken at the annual gathering of the National Conference in Kashmir in 1945.  I was in conversation with Moneeza Hashmi, who chairs the Lahore Arts Council and is the daughter of the renowned poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz and his British wife, Alys. She was born in the same years as Kabir Bedi - 1946. So wonderful to be talking about Freda in the city that she adopted as her home - and the city in which she and her husband were happiest.
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The Lives of Freda- a blog about my biography of Freda Bedi 
Andrew Whitehead
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