Sikkim

In 1963 Palden Thondup Namgyal, the Chogyal of Sikkim, married Hope Cooke, a young American, in the Himalayan kingdom he ruled. Their wedding brought them international attention they had not expected, and they used it to press the case for Sikkim's independence. The small state had outlasted the end of British rule in India, but its position was fragile, and in 1975 India annexed it. Andrew Duff follows the couple through the years when the border war between India and China made the Himalayas a front in the wider contest of the Cold War in Asia. Sikkim, wedged between the two powers, became a pawn in that struggle. Rumours spread that the American queen was working for the CIA. At the same time, a Scottish woman known as the Kazini of Chakung, married to one of Sikkim's most prominent politicians, helped organise opposition to the Palace. The book draws on exclusive interviews and fresh archival research to show how a kingdom slipped away under pressure from forces far larger than itself. Thondup died a broken man in 1982, Hope returned to New York, and Sikkim became India's twenty-second state. Duff tells it as a story of romance, intrigue and loss, with a vivid portrait of a vanished Himalayan world.