Trace and Tell your Family's Empire Stories
Introduction
Diana Rigg, 1960s icon of TV, film and stage, is best known for playing Emma Peel in the Avengers and Tracy Di Vicenzo, the only woman whom James Bond married.
What is less well known about her is that she grew up in India, the daughter of a railway engineer in the final days of the British Raj. In Episode One of Empire's Children she retraces her family's journey to India to discover more about their life.
Her father was employed by Maharaja Ganga Singh on the Rajasthan railway and was to work there for more than 20 years. But the Indian independence movement was already gathering pace. British rule, which had been maintained in India for over 300 years, would soon be swept away, forcing Louis and his family to return to a changed Britain.
Browser by chapterIn 1929, fours years after arriving in Bikaner, Diana's father Louis qualified for six months' leave. At the top of his agenda was to find a wife. British and Indian people led largely segregated lives by this time and intermarriage was discouraged, so finding a wife meant returning to England.
It took Louis six weeks to get to England and would take him another six week to get back. This left him only three months at home in Doncaster to find himself a bride.
It was at the local tennis club that Louis would meet his future wife, Beryl Halliwell, who at 21 had never before set foot outside England. The couple got engaged in 1929, but it was more than two years before Louis was able to persuade Beryl to make the six-week voyage to India. When she finally arrived, they were married and honeymooned at a remote hill station before settling into their new quarters in Bikaner.
