Mihir Bose

The first comprehensive history of India's film industry, one that now rivals Hollywood.Hollywood may define our idea of movies but it is the city of Bombay on the west coast of India that is now the center of world cinema. Every year the Indian film industry produces more than a 1,000 feature films, every day fourteen million Indians go to a movie and, a billion more people a year buy tickets for Indian movies than for Hollywood ones. The rise of Bombay as the film capital of the world has been remarkable. Bollywood takes the cinematic tech-niques of Hollywood and uses them to produce movies that bear no relation to the original, but have a compelling appeal, that, in the last half a century, has enthralled audiences throughout eastern Europe, the Middle East and north Africa. The movies themselves are a self contained world with their multiple song and dance routines, intense melodrama, a plot that contains everything from farce to tragedy, but always produces a happy ending. The men and women who create these movies are even more remarkable and it is this fantastic, rich, diverse story, a veritable Indian fairyland that Mihir Bose, a native of Bombay, tells with vivid brilliance, in the first comprehensive history of this major social and cultural phenomenon.Bollywood movies may only recently have begun to be noticed in the west, but they have long defined the very concept of cinema for many millions across the globe. While the name Bollywood echoes and acknowledges its bastard American parentage the son has long since taken over from the father

A History

Bollywood

In this book, Mihir Bose examines the rollercoaster nature of India's cricket history, from its early days in the time of the British Raj to the present day period that has been characterised by both the sublime (the batting mastery of Sachin Tendulkar) and the ridiculous (the match-fixing scandals associated with the nefarious activities of certain Indian bookmakers). Mihir Bose's lively, informed, and always entertaining text is supported by a full statistical appendix.

A History of Indian Cricket

The Premier League is immensely successful, a true worldwide success of the kind not enjoyed by any other English product. Such is the dominance of the Premier League that people have changed their sleeping habits on match days around the world. This fascinating book charts the rise of the Premier League. Few of its founders saw it as a worldwide phenomenon, but the power of TV media, the wider changes in Europe and influx of rich men s money (led by Roman Abramovich) propelled the Premier League into a class of its own. Yet, the Premier League s rise was a spectacular cocktail of events, few of which were properly anticipated let alone planned for. Without any safeguards as to how clubs are governed, or how English football is protected from predators, we are now witnessing a financial crisis of such dimensions that the game may be forced to change in order to survive. Mihir Bose, the UK s leading sports/business journalist, takes us on a mesmerizing journey involving high stakes, multi-billion pound deals, powerful and rich people, and the future of the beautiful game."

How the English Premier League Came to Dominate the World

Game Changer

A Life of Subhas Chandra Bose

Raj, Secrets, Revolution

Graham Sharpe

This is the story of how a working class boy born into a family of 13 children in pre-World War I Birmingham grew up to revolutionize the world of betting and bookmaking. William Hill beat the odds by starting out as a teenage one-man band, making the rounds of Birmingham's factories, pubs, and clubs on his secondhand motorbike taking penny, tuppence, and tanner bets. He went on to launch a fixed odds soccer betting business which took a total of £6 18/6d in its first week, but grew to a multi-million pound turnover before being almost taxed into extinction. However, today, William Hill, whose first London office was opened in 1934, and staffed by just William and one clerk, is a truly global bookmaker, with offices in nine countries; operating across 19 time zones, it is a FTSE 100 company, has over 2,500 betting shops and employs nearly 20,000 people.

The Man and the Business

William Hill

The Extraordinary Story of How India Took Over the Cricket World

The Nine Waves

The great British dilemma is this: Britain is a country forever wrestling with two moral sides—whether to be viewed as a lion that roars and conquers, or a gentle lamb that gambols happily. In the days of the empire, one face meant the Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus, the Mother of Parliaments, and the country that harbored people forced to flee their homelands. But there also was an imperial face, where colonial subjects were made very aware that the British knew how to ensure obedience, even if that required the use of brutal force. Brexit has once again highlighted these dualities. In Britain’s Eternal Dilemma, Mihir Bose shows how those who voted to leave the E.U. want Britain to roar like a lion. In contrast, the Remainers saw Brexit as a self-inflicted wound, believing the only option is to live symbiotically with the rest of Europe for a common future. Writing from the unique perspective of an immigrant, Bose personifies this ongoing debate: He has experienced racism in his near half century in Britain, but he has also been provided unimaginable opportunities to become a writer, opportunities he would never have had in his native India. This timely book demonstrates that Britain is still wresting with its two-sided identity while also showing that Brexit is still the number one priority on the European political agenda.

A Portrait of British Moral Duality

Lion and Lamb

The story of Manchester United is a phenomenon. On the field they play a brand of soccer that is matched by few others, and in the boardroom they have equaled this success by becoming the richest soccer club in the world. This riveting account explores the circumstances, people and events that have made Manchester United one of the most recognized brands on the planet.

The Rise and Rise of the World's Premier Football Club

Manchester Unlimited

Examines cricket's influence on India, from the beginnings to the growth that led to India becoming the commercial backbone of the sport worldwide.

The Magic of Indian Cricket

A Maidan View

In the last twenty years, Indian cricket has been transformed. With the arrival of global television networks, mass-media coverage and multinational sponsors, cricket has become big business and India has become the economic driving force in the world game. For the first time a developing country has become a major player in the international sports arena. This fully updated and revised edition of Mihir Bose's classic history is a unique account of the Indian cricket phenomenon. Drawing on a combination of extensive research and personal experience, Bose traces the development of the Indian game from its beginnings as a colonial pastime to its coming of age as a national passion and now a global commercial powerhouse. This illuminating study reveals Indian cricket's central place in modern India’s identity, culture and society. Insightful, honest and challenging, Bose tackles the myths and controversies of Indian cricket. He considers the game in terms of race, caste, politics, national consciousness and ambition, money, celebrity and the media, evoking all the unpredictability, frustration and glory that is the magic of Indian cricket.

Cricket and Society in India

Manchester United is the most useful soccer brand in the world - globally huge as far as the Far East: the world's richest club, with the highest turnover, the biggest profits, the widest fan base and, over years, the best players and the greatest success on the field. The author tells the story of this financial behemoth of sport.

Trouble and Takeover at the World's Richest Football Club

Manchester Disunited

The True Story of the Most Remarkable Secret Agent of World War II

The Indian Spy

The spirit of the game was first nurtured on the playing fields of the English public school, and in the pages of Tom Brown's Schooldays- this Corinthian spirit was then exported around the world. The competitive spirit, the importance of fairness, the nobility of the gifted amateur seemed to sum up everything that was good about Britishness and the games they played. Today, sport is dominated by corruption, money, celebrity and players who are willing to dive in the box if it wins them a penalty. Yet, we still believe and talk about the game as if it had a higher moral purpose. Since the age of Thomas Arnold, Sport has been used to glorify dictatorships and was at the heart of cold war diplomacy. Prime Ministers, princes and presidents will do whatever they can to ensure that their country holds a major sporting tournament. Nelson Mandela saw the victory of the Rugby World Cup as essential to his hopes for the Rainbow Nation. Mihir Bose has lived his life around sport and in this book he tells the story of how Sport has lost its original spirit and how it has emerged in the 20th century to become the most powerful political tool in the world. With examples and stories from around the world including how the sport-hating Thomas Arnold become an icon; how a German manufacturer gave Jessie Owens a pair of shoes at the Berlin games of 1936 and went on to dominate the world of sport; how India stole cricket from the ICC; how an Essex car dealer become the most powerful man in Formula 1; and who really sold football out. Praise for Mihir Bose: 'Mihir Bose is India's CLR James.' Simon Barnes, The Times. 'Mihir's insider knowledge is unsurpassed' David Welch. 'His Olympic contacts are second to none. He knows everybody.' Sue Mott.

How Sport Made the Modern World

The Spirit of the Game

Mihir Bose was born in January 1947. Eight months later, India became a modern, free nation. The country he knew growing up in the 1960s has undergone vast and radical change. India today exports food, sends space probes to Mars, and, all too often, Indian businesses rescue their ailing competitors in the West. In From Midnight to Glorious Morning?, Bose travels the length and breadth of India to explore how a country that many doubted would survive has been transformed into one capable of rivaling China as the world’s preeminent economic superpower. Multifarious challenges still continue to plague the country: although inequality and corruption are issues not unique to India, such a rapid ascent to global prominence creates a precarious position. However, as Bose outlines, this rapid ascent provides evidence that India is ever capable of making great strides in the face of great adversity. Bose’s penetrating analysis of the last seventy years asks what is yet to be done for India in order to fulfill the destiny with which it has been imbued. The predictions of doom in August 1947 have proved to be unfounded; the growth of the nation in population and capital has been exponential, and there is much to celebrate. But Bose’s nuanced, personal, and trenchant book shows that it is naïve to pretend the hoped-for bright morning has yet dawned.

India Since Independence

From Midnight to Glorious Morning?

History abounds with many heroes. The Indian freedom struggle had its own share of them. Subhas Chandra Bose fired the nation with patriotic fervour, very different in character to the non-violent approach preached by Gandhi. Truly an outsider to the movements of satyagraha and passive resistance that rapidly gained momentum, he made a valiant effort to galvanize the nation into action with evocative slogans such as  Freedom is never given, it is taken' . . . 'Tum mujhe khoon do, main tumhe azadi doonga'. JAI HIND  India's national greeting ? was the salutation coined by him to arouse nationalistic passion among the Indians. In what was unthinkable then, Bose dared to ally with the Nazis and the Japanese, and raised an indigenous army called Azad Hind Fauj to challenge the military might of the British Empire. Why then has Subhas Chandra Bose been largely marginalized as a footnote in the history of India's independence? Perhaps the mythical legends that continue to shroud both his personal life and political happenstance hold some answers. The Lost Hero  a thoroughly researched biography of Subhas Bose  delves into the life and times of this great man, with the hope that he is granted a befitting place in the annals of Indian history.

Mihir Bose

About

Books

Join the club