Calcutta

In the foreword to the first edition Geoffrey Moorhouse wrote: 'In a sense, the story of Calcutta is the story of India . . . It is the story of how and why Empire was created and what happened when Empire finished . . . The imperial residue of Calcutta, a generation after Empire ended, is both a monstrous and a marvellous city. Journalism and television have given us a rough idea of the monstrosities but none at all of the marvels. I can only hope to define the first more clearly and to persuad