of the British Raj in India with many scenes set in Lucknow and environs. Most of the latter part of the book is set in Lucknow during the Siege. The plot of Philip Pullman's Ruby in the Smoke relies heavily on fictional events that supposedly occurred during the siege. Anurag Kumar's Recalcitrance is mostly based on the part played by commoners during the siege. It describes the siege as well as the final relief. It is almost entirely based on the events in Lucknow. It also describes the part played by Raja Jai Lal Singh, a commander of revolutionary forces whose contributions were highlighted for the first time by the author through newspaper articles. His contributions caused a memorial park to be built around the place where this mysterious revolutionary soldier was hanged at the end of the Great Uprising of 1857. The novel was first published in 2008 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the mutiny. Valerie Fitzgerald's novel Zemindar is set in the lead up to and siege of Lucknow with the evacuation, seen from perspective of women in the Residency. In the British television series Downton Abbey (Season 2, Episode 1), the Dowager Countess, Violet Crawley, tells her granddaughter during World War I, "War deals out strange tasks. Remember your great-aunt Roberta...She loaded the guns at Lucknow." The arrival of the second relief force is the subject of "The Relief of Lucknow", by Robert Traill Spence Lowell. William McGonagall's poem The Capture of Lucknow also describes the events of the second relief. The 1981 Indian film Umrao Jaan depicts the siege from the perspective of a nautch dancer in Lucknow. References Footnotes Bibliography Edwardes, Michael, Battles of the Indian Mutiny, Pan, 1963, Forbes-Mitchell, William. The Relief of Lucknow. London: Folio Society, 1962. Forrest, G. W., A History of the Indian Mutiny Volumes 1–3, Edinburgh and London: William Black and Son, 1904, reprinted 2006, and Hibbert, Christopher, The Great Mutiny, Christopher Hibbert, Penguin, 1978, Wolseley, Field Marshal Viscount, Story of a Soldier's Life Volume 1, London: Archibald Constable & Company 1903 Further reading First person accounts: Bartrum, Katherine Mary. A Widow's Reminiscences of the Siege of Lucknow., London: James Nisbet & Co., 1858. Online at A Celebration of Women Writers. Inglis, Julia Selina, Lady, 1833–1904, The Siege of Lucknow: a Diary, London: James R. Osgood, McIlvaine & Co., 1892. Online at A Celebration of Women Writers. Rees, L.