SOLD OUT Lecture, Robert Grant Irving, The Last Great County Seat

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The Last Great Country Seat: Viceroy’s House, Imperial Delhi

The buildings of Imperial Delhi —now New Delhi—were designed to provide a properly magnificent setting for the pomp of Britain’s Indian Empire at its most imposing. Viceroy’s House, a sprawling 340-room palace, was conceived in 1912 as the centerpiece of the new capital by renowned architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, celebrated for his outstanding country house designs. Lutyens’ Viceregal edifice combined public grandeur and private domesticity, functioning admirably as both ceremonial stage set and comfortable residence. Brooding over city and plain, the titanic dome of the great house expressed the very essence of art for empire’s sake, a tangible reminder of British authority at the heart of the Indian subcontinent. When it was formally inaugurated in 1931, Viceroy’s House was seen as a noble epitaph to imperial rule, but came to a swift end in 1947 when Lord Mountbatten transferred power to Indian hands.

Robert Grant Irving is a Fellow at Berkeley College at Yale, and has taught at Wesleyan, Trinity College, and the University of Virginia. He has lectured on six continents and has held research grants in India, Africa, Britain, and the United States, including a Fulbright Scholarship and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Dr. Irving’s book Indian Summer, on the creation of New Delhi, won the British Council Prize in the Humanities as well as the highest honor of the Society of Architectural Historians, the Alice Davis Hitchcock Book Award.

The evening is sponsored by Boston Athenæum Proprietor Ronald Lee Fleming.

Reservations for Boston Athenæum Members: There is no fee for this event. Reservations are required but will not be accepted until February 24. Please call the Athenæum's reservation line, 617-720-7600.

Reservations for Non-Members:  There is no fee for this event. Reservations are required but will not be accepted until February 24. Please call the Athenæum's reservation line, 617-720-7600.