Indian Summer is surely destined for Hollywood. Equipped with a handsome and flamboyant cast, Alex von Tunzelmann has already more or less arranged the settings, designed the costumes and produced a script which flits from place to place and from character to character, deftly interweaving private lives with political events in a racy, dramatic and often humorous narrative.

It’s easy to envisage some colourful scenes: ‘Dickie’ Mountbatten and ‘David’ Prince of Wales larking about in a pool and pig-sticking in Jodhpur (frivolous upper-class background); Mountbatten as viceroy and his wife Edwina having nightly rows in midsummer Delhi (marital stress and pathos); Gandhi on his day of silence visiting