Victoria and Abdul Author on the Movie ’s Unlikely Story: ‘It Sounds Like a Fantasy’

The first time Shrabani Basu heard of Abdul Karim, she was carrying out research for a book about the history of curry in the late 1990s. A few years later, while on holiday with her family, she came across a painting of Karim in Osborne House, a former private home of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert on the U.K.’s Isle of Wight. Basu was immediately struck by the fact that Karim — whom she thought was a servant — had been painted “beautifully, in red and gold,” with a book in his hand. “I knew that Abdul Karim had come from India to England to serve Queen Victoria in 1887, but the portraits told me he’d been painted as a noble man,” Basu tells TIME during a meeting at her literary agent’s office in London in early September. “Later, in Queen Victoria’s dressing area, I saw two pictures: one of the Queen’s confidant John Brown, and below it, Karim. He was obviously someone very special to her.” Karim’s photos sparked Basu’s curiosity. Who was this young Muslim man from Agra, northern India, at the heart of Britain’s royal court? And what had his relationship with the Queen of England been like? In 2006, Basu committed herself to researching Karim’s story. The resulting book, Victoria and Abdul: The True Story of the Queen’s Closest Confidant, would take her four years to research and write, and would later be adapted into a movie. That movie, Victoria and Abdul, starri...
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized movies victoria and abdul Source Type: news