Untold Lives

In 2015, the British Library’s Untold Lives collection featured extracts from letters held in the India Office Records, written a century earlier by Indian soldiers serving in France or recovering from their wounds in the Indian hospitals based in England. Around the same time, Scottish-Indian baritone Neil Balfour discovered a picture of his Scottish grandfather during World War One, in military uniform and standing alongside an Indian soldier. Exploring further, reading letters and discovering tales of both great bravery and great injustice, Neil was inspired to commission the composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad to write a new song cycle, setting some of these texts. Alongside the premiere of this work, Neil and Sid Ramchander include songs by Reena Esmail and Shruthi Rajasekar.