I have been fascinated by India for such a long time, so I was really keen to read this. What a disappointment!

The author's rambling style leads to a disjointed book with no sense of cohesion. Part 1 is really just a lengthy list of the author, John Baillie's achievements. He has attempted to write it as an “obituary” about himself, which might be a novel approach, but was just so tedious to get through, and frankly, not in the least bit interesting to me. The whole thing, while obviously well researched is presented in a particularly dry, disjointed and, frankly, uninteresting way. I gave up halfway through Part 11.

I was quite excited to read Five Brothers in India and to learn more about the Baillie family. I regret that I found this book disjointed, uninteresting, and amateurish. The three sections are unrelated. The first is autobiographical, recording a moderately successful naval and finance career; littered with anecdotes and long passages of correspondence, it did not hold my attention. The second section seems bizarre, ostensibly a discussion of faith, it promulgates a bizarre thesis about Christian origins . The third section has some primary source value but not enough to redeem this scattershot affair.