"The Golden Oriole" (1987) combined a journal of Trevelyan's five journeys to the subcontinent with historical chronicle, genealogy, family photographs, memoirs and interviews, to trace his family's involvement across 200 years of British involvement in India. Notable were Sir William Macnaghten, the British Resident in Kabul whose beheading during the First Anglo-Afghan War prompted the 1842 retreat from Kabul and the Massacre of Elphinstone's Army and the ten Trevelyans who were among the hundreds of Britons massacred during the Siege of Cawnpore in the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Others ancestors discussed in the chronicle include Thomas Babington Macaulay who introduced English-medium education in India; Charles Trevelyan, reformer of the British Civil Service and later Governor of Madras and Indian Finance Minister; George Otto Trevelyan, the author of the classic, "The Competition Wallah" (1865); Humphrey Trevelyan, a British diplomat who became one of Jawaharlal Nehru's closest and most valued associates during the final preparations for Indian Independence; and, of course, his own parents.