Four men shaped the end of British rule in India: Nehru, Gandhi, Mountbatten and Jinnah. We know a great deal about the first three, but Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, has mostly either been ignored or in the case of Richard Attenborough's hugely successful film, Gandhi, portrayed as a cold megalomaniac, bent on the bloody partition of India.

Akbar Ahmed's major study tells a different story of heroism and tragedy and of backstage manoeuvering among the governing elite of the Raj, and argues for Jinnah's continuing relevance as contemporary Islam debates its future direction.