 Last night, The Lives of Freda was launched in Mumbai. Kabir Bedi, Freda's son, talked movingly about his mother ... Malavika Sangghvi, whose parents were friends and comrades of the Bedis in Kashmir in the 1940s, hosted the evening ... and that's me on the left. It was magical to hear from one of those who came along about living next door to the Bedis in Lahore's Model Town in the 1940s. Others spoke about coming across Freda and her family in the 1960s. More than a hundred people attended and the event was organised by LiteratureLive!, with particular thanks to Anil Dharker and Amy Fernandes. And by my count a dozen or more Bedis were in attendance. It was so nice that commanding figures in the BBC in India, Yogita Limaye and Sameer Hashmi, came along. Thanks guys! 
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 Freda and B.P.L. Bedi in Kashmir in the 1940s The Lives of Freda is reviewed in today's issue of the Jammu-based paper the Daily Excelsior - the reviewer is Ramesh Tamiri, a very considerable expert on Kashmir and particularly the progressive strand within Kashmiri politics. As you would expect, the review focusses on Freda and B.P.L. Bedi's political activity in Kashmir, and the left-wing current within Kashmiri nationalism that they championed. Ramesh Tamiri is himself writing about the history of the Kashmiri left. Here's the link to the review: https://www.dailyexcelsior.com/bedis-s-kashmir-connection/?fbclid=IwAR13pduAXotKJvsR4LFqU-bmxc3wLpqa4DJXtG2xapC7kzjn-O2jdZ7ZCh4   Urvashi Butalia and Andrew Whitehead   BBC correspondents past and present: Andrew Whitehead, Rajini Vaidyanathan, Sir Mark Tully
  The hosts of the launch, the Oxford Bookstore, have posted more photos of the event on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/BxpVm2TnWx2/?igshid=1cis7b54lax0j
 If you are in or around Delhi, do come to this launch on Friday!
Here's the review of The Lives of Freda in the news magazine India Today. Geeta Doctor is the reviewer: https://www.indiatoday.in/leisure/story/freda-bedi-buddhist-nun-1509759-2019-04-26  'This well-written, extensively researched work — interviews with friends and family (including her son Kabir Bedi, the actor), combined with the scrutiny of correspondence, tape recordings, newspaper archives— makes for an insightful, riveting tale of a life extraordinaire.'
That's from a review of The Lives of Freda in today's New Indian Express: http://www.newindianexpress.com/lifestyle/books/2019/apr/21/woman-extraordinaire-1966289.html  This was truly a labour of love. When romance stirred between B.P.L. Bedi and Freda Houlston, fellow students at Oxford, their joint endeavour to track down Karl Marx's newspaper articles about India cemented their relationship. They spent many hours in the reading room of the British Museum seeking out and copying down Marx's writings. A couple of years after moving to Lahore, the couple undertook the first publication in book form of Marx's articles on India. It was a conspicuous contribution towards the growing interest in Marxism in South Asia.
My own copy of Letters on India - I can't remember how I got it, but I think from a second-hand bookshop in Gurgaon - bears the ownership signature of Rajani Palme Dutt. He was a prominent British communist who had particular responsibility for guidance - intellectual and strategic - of the Indian communist movement. There's some underlining in the text, mainly in red crayon, but no waspish comments or other sotto voce marginal notes. At the time the Bedis brought out Marx's Letters on India they were publishing a particularly impressive progressive quarterly. Contemporary India also touched on Marx and Marxism. There's a complete set of the journal in - of course - the British Library.  The news magazine The Week has just published a favourable review of The Lives of Freda, describing the biography as a 'vivid portrayal of [Freda's] life and choices' - the link to the piece is here: https://www.theweek.in/theweek/leisure/2019/04/12/the-lives-of-freda-review-vivid-portrayal-of-a-remarkable-life.html
 The Millennium Post has published a sizable extract from The Lives of Freda - with an enticing array of images.
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The Lives of Freda- a blog about my biography of Freda Bedi 
Andrew Whitehead
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