A renowned historian and author, Rudrangshu Mukherjee has taught History at the University of Calcutta and held visiting appointments at Princeton University, University of Manchester and University of California, Santa Cruz. He was the Editor of the Editorial Pages, at The Telegraph, Kolkata. He studied at Calcutta Boys’ School, Presidency College, Kolkata, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and St. Edmund Hall, Oxford. He was awarded a D.Phil in Modern History by the University of Oxford in 1981. Mukherjee is internationally acclaimed as a historian of the revolt of 1857 in India. His first book, Awadh in Revolt, 1857-58: A Study of Popular Resistance (1984) has become a standard reference on the subject. He has looked at the 1857 rebellion in four other books: Spectre of Violence: The 1857 Kanpur Massacres (1998), Mangal Pandey: Brave Martyr or Accidental Hero? (2005), Dateline 1857: Revolt against the Raj (2008) and The Year of Blood: Essays on 1857 (2014).