The Spectator’s Notes | 26 November 2011

On Tuesday morning, I was sitting reading Jessica Douglas-Home’s vivid new book about the great Delhi Durbar in 1911 (A Glimpse of Empire, Michael Russell). In the background, the Today programme was burbling. I had just got to the bit about the Maharajas paying homage to the King-Emperor. The author describes how the Maharaja of Nawanagar — better known as the great cricketer Ranjitsinhji — though splendid in his silver carriage, was also stony broke: ‘Ranji’s extravagance was much frowned upon in official circles … After the Durbar, he was humiliated by the imposition of a financial adviser upon his administration’. Then on to Today came a man called Horst Reichenbach, a German. He is the representative of the EU ‘troika’ charged with making Greece submit to its financial ‘advice’. From Raj to Reich, with exactly a century in between, the situation is not so different.

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Another colourful figure at the Durbar was the Gaekwar of Baroda.