Jessica Douglas-Home’s aptly titled book is based on the diaries of her grandmother Lilah Wingfield, who attended the Delhi Durbar in 1911 and then spent some weeks touring India. It is a glimpse of Empire from a privileged position since Lilah was the daughter of a viscount and the grand-daughter of an earl, brought up at Powerscourt Castle in Ireland and spending her summers at Holkham Hall in Norfolk. She sat in the grandstand for ‘Distinguished Spectators’ at the Durbar and was the guest of several Indian rulers during her tour. She did not, however, ‘share the assumption of superiority that afflicted many of the officials of the Raj’, her granddaughter writes. ‘She was too Irish for that.’
The recently crowned George V was the first British monarch to visit India, and the Durbar had been arranged so that the rulers of the country’s princely states (over which the British held suzerainty) could pay public homage to their new King-Emperor.
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