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Robert Grant Irving is an author and lecturer specializing in the history of art and architecture of Britain and the British Empire. His book Indian Summer: Lutyens, Baker, and Imperial Delhi (Yale University Press, 1981 and Oxford University Press, 1982) is the story of the creation of New Delhi from 1911 to 1931, the grandest architectural undertaking in the history of the British Empire. The principal architects were the two leading practitioners of the day, Sir Edwin Lutyens and Sir Herbert Baker. Irving's book 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.
Irving was born in Hartford, Connecticut of Scottish-Canadian parents and was educated at Balliol College, Oxford; King's College, Cambridge; and Yale University. He holds degrees in history and the history of art and architecture. A Fellow of Berkeley College at Yale, he has taught at Yale, Wesleyan, Trinity College in Hartford, and the University of Virginia. Irving has lectured at universities and museums on six continents. He has held research grants in India, Africa, Britain, and the United States, including a Fulbright Scholarship and Fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, American Institute of Indian Studies, American Council of Learned Societies, Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Irving has been a lifetime advocate and activist for historic preservation.
During his studies at Yale [1] in preparation for his dissertation, Irving had been conducting research in India in 1968–69. Irving had placed all his research material in two trunks that were shipped from New Delhi to Hartford. Upon his return to Yale in 1969, he discovered that Pan American World Airways had lost his research. The airline permitted Irving to visit John F. Kennedy Airport to search through 16 acres (not 60, as stated in a news article) of unclaimed luggage. He was able to locate one trunk, but the contents had become damaged and useless because of exposure to the weather. Irving filed a successful $15,000 (not $35,000, as stated in a press article) lawsuit to recoup expenses accrued on his return to India to redo his entire research and photography. Discovered too late to be of use, the second trunk surfaced at a Boston airport warehouse after more than four years.
The completed dissertation became the basis for the award-winning book Indian Summer.
New Delhi is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the Government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Sansad Bhavan, and the Supreme Court. New Delhi is a municipality within the NCT, administered by the NDMC, which covers mostly Lutyens' Delhi and a few adjacent areas. The municipal area is part of a larger administrative district, the New Delhi district.
Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens was an English architect known for imaginatively adapting traditional architectural styles to the requirements of his era. He designed many English country houses, war memorials and public buildings. In his biography, the writer Christopher Hussey wrote, "In his lifetime (Lutyens) was widely held to be our greatest architect since Wren if not, as many maintained, his superior". The architectural historian Gavin Stamp described him as "surely the greatest British architect of the twentieth century".
Campion Hall is one of the four permanent private halls of the University of Oxford in England. A Catholic hall, it is run by the Society of Jesus and named after Edmund Campion, a martyr and fellow of St John's College, Oxford. The hall is located on Brewer Street, between Christ Church and Pembroke College. The buildings, along with many of the fixtures and fittings, were designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, his only buildings in Oxford. The hall also houses an extensive collection of religious art spanning 600 years; the pieces were collected primarily by Fr Martin D'Arcy in the 1930s.
The Rashtrapati Bhavan is the official residence of the President of India at the western end of Rajpath, Raisina Hill, New Delhi, India. It was formerly known as Viceroy's House and constructed during the zenith of British Empire. Rashtrapati Bhavan may refer to only the 340-room main building that has the president's official residence, including reception halls, guest rooms and offices, also called the mansion; it may also refer to the entire 130-hectare (320-acre) Presidential Estate that additionally includes the presidential gardens, large open spaces, residences of bodyguards and staff, stables, other offices and utilities within its perimeter walls. In terms of area, it is the second largest residence of any head of state in the world after Quirinal Palace in Italy. The other presidential homes are the Rashtrapati Nilayam in Hyderabad, Telangana and The Retreat Building in Shimla, Himachal Pradesh.
The India Gate is a war memorial located near the Kartavya path on the eastern edge of the "ceremonial axis" of New Delhi, formerly called Rajpath. It stands as a memorial to 84,000 soldiers of the Indian Army who died between 1914 and 1921 in the First World War, in France, Flanders, Mesopotamia, Persia, East Africa, Gallipoli and elsewhere in the Near and the Far East, and the Third Anglo-Afghan War. 13,300 servicemen's names, including some soldiers and officers from the United Kingdom, are inscribed on the gate. Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, the gate evokes the architectural style of the ancient Roman triumphal arches such as the Arch of Constantine in Rome, and later memorial arches; it is often compared to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and the Gateway of India in Mumbai.
Sir Herbert Baker was an English architect remembered as the dominant force in South African architecture for two decades, and a major designer of some of New Delhi's most notable government structures. He was born and died at Owletts in Cobham, Kent.
The Secretariat Building or Central Secretariat houses the important ministries of the Government of India. Situated at Raisina Hill, New Delhi, the Secretariat buildings are two blocks of symmetrical buildings on opposite sides of the great axis of Kartavya Path, and flanking the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Henry Alexander Nesbitt Medd OBE FRIBA, was a British-born architect, whose career was made in India. He is most known for being in the team of architects, team led by Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker, which designed the new capital of India, New Delhi (1911–1931).Post inauguration of New Delhi, when most of architects left, he stayed on, designed many more buildings and eventually remained, Chief Architect to the Government of India (1939–47).
Walter Sykes George CBE, FRIBA, ARCA, FIIA, FIFA (1881–1962) was an English architect active in India during the first half of the 20th century, most known for being part of the team of architects who designed New Delhi, the new capital of India, from 1911-1931.
Ebba Koch is an Austrian art and architectural historian, who defines and discusses cultural issues of interest to political, social and economic historians. Presently she is a professor at the Institute of Art History in Vienna, Austria and a senior researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. She completed her doctorate in philosophy and her Habilitation at Vienna University.
Lutyens' Delhi is an area in New Delhi, India, named after the British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869–1944), who was responsible for much of the architectural design and building during the period of the British Raj, when India was part of the British Empire in the 1920s and 1930s and 1940s. This also includes the Lutyens Bungalow Zone (LBZ).
Tapan Raychaudhuri was a British-Indian historian specialising in British Indian history, Indian economic history and the History of Bengal.
Sir Christopher Alan Bayly, FBA, FRSL was a British historian specialising in British Imperial, Indian and global history. From 1992 to 2013, he was Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History at the University of Cambridge.
Sir Samuel Swinton Jacob,, known as Sir Swinton Jacob, was a British Army officer and colonial engineer, architect and writer, best known for the numerous Indian public buildings he designed in the Indo-Saracenic style.
Sanjay Subrahmanyam is an Indian historian who specialises in the early modern period and in connected history. He is the author of several books and publications. He holds the Irving and Jean Stone Endowed Chair in Social Sciences at UCLA which he joined in 2004.
Shiv K. Kumar was an Indian English-language poet, playwright, novelist, and short story writer. His grandfather late Tulsi Das Kumar was a school teacher and his father Bishan Das Kumar, was a retired headmaster. The letter 'K' stands for Krishna, i.e. Shiv Krishna Kumar.
Sunita Kohli is an Indian interior designer, architectural restorer and furniture manufacturer. She had restored and decorated Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament House Colonnade (1985–1989), the Prime Minister's Office and Hyderabad House in New Delhi.
Arthur Shoosmith OBE was an English architect who emigrated to India and worked for a time on behalf of the well-known English architect Sir Edwin Lutyens.
Mridu Rai is an Indian historian who serves as a professor at Presidency University, Kolkata. Rai is the author of the prizewinning book Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Islam, Rights, and the History of Kashmir (2004).
The Architecture of Delhi dates back more than a thousand years. As the capital of several great empires of India, including Rajput kingdom, Delhi Sultanate, Mughal Empire, and British Raj, the city of Delhi has been a centre for art and architecture.