 Today we're actually here looking at Princess Helen Aluwalia of Kapoorthala. That's right. Tell me a little bit more. Well, she's the daughter of Maharaja Randheer Singh of Kapoorthala from the Aluwalia family and she was born in the Punjab in the 1860s and she died in this village in Essex at the age of 23 and unknown to anyone. It is a tiny little village called Boddinghurst which I've never even heard of. Look at this. I mean so much history. That's right and this history was a history, a lost history waiting to be discovered and now we know more about her life, so many lovely stories about her mother and how she ended up in this little village. So I have to tell you that my most exciting story when I was googling her was that she became the model for a really well-known artist called Edwin Long and she did lots of lovely poses for him in what in those days was very scandalous where like you know because it's just sort of very revealing where and I just think what a gutsy fabulous woman she must have been like so much ahead of her times. Well, they were biblical images so they were for bibles. Long used to do paintings for illustrated bibles which was all the rage in the 19th century and it sort of went out of fashion. So when those bibles went out of fashion the demand for Long's work also fell and as you probably heard earlier on he was a superstar back in the 19th century before his works. He was and one of the reports I read on him was that it went out of fashion because he used to make them really long. I mean one of his most famous paintings was five meters long. That's right. Like where would you even put that? Huge canvases. But you know but for me the fact that she broke those barriers. I mean today if some artist comes along and asks a woman to be his muse to pose for him it's considered such a huge honour back then it was like oh no she's Unchaperone she couldn't be doing this so I think it's fantastic. Yeah I mean even like examples of her going out Unchaperone which was unheard of for ladies of a certain title of a certain status there was instances of her being reported sitting amongst company of men which single woman did not do at that time. So she broke the mold you could say. And Kapoorthala's broke the mold. I mean one of them married Anita Delgado. That's right the famous Spanish dancer. Another famous one we had was Princess Indira Devi who was the first South Asian woman who got employment with the BBC and became a BBC radio broadcaster during the Second World War. And these are all the Kapoorthala women. Yeah. So Peter what led you to discover Princess Helen Alawalia? Purely by chance I was looking for old photographs I'm an art collector myself and I came across an inscribed cabinet card photograph which was inscribed Helen Alawalia of Kapoorthala which a quick search led me to to this grave in this sleepy village. And now I'm keen to learn more and research and who knows maybe we could be looking at a future documentary a future length documentary or an even a book on the subject. Yeah I really want to know more about her and I think that these stories need to be archived for the next generation they're part of our history of Punjab so we need to know more. Definitely I mean she is one of the the early Punjabis to come and settle in this country.