No one could have invented John Beames, whose vibrant and original memoirs were discovered by chance in an attic almost a century after they were penned. He arrived in Indian in 1858, and worked there as a civil servant for the next forty-five years, defending powerless peasants against rapacious planters, improvising fifteen-gun salutes for visiting dignitaries and presiding over the blissful coast of Orissa. His acquaintances spanned from lofty Rajas to dissolute Englishmen. Vivid, candid and without fear of authority, Beames was a defiant individual in a huge bureaucracy. He writes with the richness of Dickens.