'She Bought a New Dress to Meet Nehru'

2/20/2019

Freda Bedi never came back to make her home in Derby after she headed to Oxford University. But Derby kept a watchful interest in her - and on occasions she wrote for the city's daily papers.

News took a while to travel back then. By the time the Derby Evening Telegraph put on its front page news of Freda's imprisonment in Lahore in 1941, her sentence was almost over.

A few years later, it was Freda's mum who was making the news. She had received a surprise invitation to meet independent India's new prime minister - and Freda's friend - Jawaharlal Nehru.

'Mrs Swan's proudest moment came when [Nehru] stopped at her table and shook hands with her.' This is from the city's morning paper, the Derby Daily Telegraph, on 25th October 1948:

The Lives of Freda:
the political, spiritual and personal
journeys of Freda Bedi

by Andrew Whitehead

Speaking Tiger, Feb 2019, ISBN 978-93-88070-75-1

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THE LIVES OF FREDA: THE BLOG