Great Hedge of India: The Search for the Living Barrier That Divided a People Roy Moxham’s tale begins in a secondhand bookshop on London’s Charing Cross Road, where, for £25, he buys the memoirs of a nineteenth-century British colonial administrative officer. In the book Moxham stumbles upon a passing reference by its author to a great hedge that had been planted by the British across the Indian subcontinent. Manned and cared for by 12,000 men, the hedge stood for fifty years and at its greatest extent ran a length of 1,500 miles. That hedge, surely one of the largest man-made-and virtually forgotten-enterprises in human history, became what Moxham calls his “ridiculous obsession.” At once a travel book and historical…. Read more
