[ Dominic Ozanne ] 

Diana Rigg retraces the footsteps of her father, Louis, who built railways for the maharajas in pre-independence India.

Louis was not, like most of the Raj, a Oxbridge graduate. He was a working-class engineer from Doncaster who, when he was made redundant, answered an ad in the Times for an engineer to work on the railways of the Maharaja of Bikaneer in Rajasthan.

Rigg rose rapidly up the ranks, eventually becoming Chief Engineer to the Maharaja of Jodhpur and occupying a large house where Diana spent her childhood.

Travelling by train through the spectacular landscapes of Rajasthan, including the Thar 

desert and Jodhpur's Blue City, Rigg casts an unusual light on the life of the British in colonial India. Visiting the Maharaja’s palaces and drawing on rare colour archive footage, she also explores the political role of the Maharajas under the Raj.