In 1929, when Edwin Lutyens handed over the newly completed building site of New Delhi to the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, many believed he had created a capital for a British empire in India that would last if not 1,000, then at least 100 years. It was, as Lord Stamfordham wrote, ‘a symbol of the might and permanence of the British empire’ that had been commissioned specifically so that ‘the Indian will see for the first time the power of western civilisation’.
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Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £20 Tel: 08430 600033. William Dalrymple has lived part-time in India since 1989. His books include Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India and The Age of Kali.
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