India House - From History To Novel

Converting historical accounts into a spy thriller

Back in November, I stumbled on this Wikipedia page for India House. I had said:

Innocuous name, no? Between 1905 and 1910, it was a hub for the Indian freedom struggle. They published an anti-colonialist newspaper called The Indian Sociologist, ran guns and money, and a lot of the revolutionaries involved in armed struggle against the British Raj lived at India house when they were students in London, usually studying law. Scotland Yard was always after them, but it ended when Madan Lal Dhingra assassinated a British official who was high up in the Indian administration. I’m incredibly fascinated, and I want to drop everything and write a novel about these guys. 

I’ve been digging into books on the topic to try understanding what it was all like. It’s been much easier than I thought so far. 

 I started off with the Wikipedia articles about the inmates of India House, and then went on to look at the sources cited. Usually, they tend to be out-of-print books. I found a couple on Amazon, a…