Following his death, Nicholson was immortalized by the Victorians to be one of the gallant figures of the Indian Rebellion as he became known as the 'Hero of Delhi' and the 'Lion of the Punjab'. In the decades following the events of the rebellion, Nicholson became a household name and his life was widely eulogized by late-nineteenth-century historians who espoused Nicholson as a martyr of the British Empire with the historian John William Kaye describing Nicholson as "one of the purest hearts and one of the soundest Heads in all our Christian community". However, in recent decades the legacy of Nicholson has been reappraised in context of his harsh attitudes towards crime and punishment. British journalist Stuart Flinders wrote that "Nicholson's name has become a byword for brutality and racism". The reexamination of Nicholson's violent and quite often controversial, even for his time, treatment of those who provoked his wrath has prompted the Scottish historian William Dalrymple to describe Nicholson as "the great imperial psychopath".