Welcome back to the historic Royal Palaces podcast and to our latest three-part series.

To accompany our new exhibition at Kensington Palace, we'll be exploring the lives of the Dilip Singh sisters,

the last princesses of Punjab.

Bamba, Catherine and Sophia Dilip Singh

were raised as aristocrats and princesses in Victorian Britain.

Yet their heritage and identity were inescapably connected to empire

and the shadow it cast over the 19th and 20th centuries.

I'm Dr. Mishka Sinha, exhibition historian and curator.

And I'm curator, Poly Putnam.

In this series, Mishkar and I will delve into the lives of these extraordinary women,

exploring the different ways they express their power, identities and heritage.

For today's episode, we'll be looking at their childhoods to ask how empire affected their early lives.

Who were the women that shaped them?

And can we see evidence of how they influenced these defiance change makers?

Joining us today is historian Dr Priya Atwal, who is Community History Fellow at the University

of Oxford's History Faculty.

Priya is author of the book Royals and Rebels, The Rise and Fall of the Sikh Empire, and

has a new book coming out in 2027 about the Leip Singh.

So, Priya, it's fantastic to have you on the podcast today as your research is happening as we speak.

Thanks so much for being here.

Thanks for having me, ladies. It's great to be on the show.

Let's start by finding out who the princesses were. Tell us about Bamba, Catherine and Safar Jalip Singh.

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