Kedleston Hall is a Georgian jewel a few miles north of Derby built to rival Chatsworth. Its 18th-century Palladian facade and neoclassical architecture and parkland are just as impressive and it is one of the National Trust’s most popular visitor sites.
It was always the wish of its former owner Lord Curzon, a Viceroy of India and a nearly Prime Minister, that his childhood home, more a palace to showcase his exquisite collection of paintings, artefacts and furniture, should be opened up to the public.
And it was duly handed over by his heirs in 1987, 62 years after his death in 1925. By some distance he has been the most generous of benefactors to the National Trust two of his other historic properties, Tattershall Castle in Lincolnshire and Bodiam, in East Sussex, were bequeathed to the nation, along with provision for their maintenance. He also restored the Elizabethan mansion Montacute in Somerset, which the Trust also took over.
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1851: The Great Exhibition
The Great Exhibition of 1851 was Britain’s glittering shop window and showcase for the world’s attention and admiration. The first and greatest industrial power, the greatest imperial power, and the greatest naval power was, in effect, showing off its extraordinary achievements and at the same time advertising its manufacturing and industrial wares.
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Although William Morris and others were to react negatively to the mass production of everyday utensils, furniture and textiles as depressingly lacking in beauty and originality, the tide could not be turned.
Within the Crystal Palace some 100,000 objects were displayed – taking up ten miles of space – the work of 15,000 contributors. Over half the display came from Britain and its empire, but other nations were invited to participate. In fact, the event was tactfully entitled “The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations”.
Down the memory lane: How Shajahanabad gave way to India s seat of power New Delhi financialexpress.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from financialexpress.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
International Affairs professor
POWER
By Michael Brenner
A divide between elites and the populace is a recurrent feature of every large organized society. That has been true without exception since the abundance generated by the mastery of agriculture encouraged the growth and elaboration of earlier Neolithic tribes. There are no known exceptions; but there are variations in modalities. A key to elite dominance always was the superior group’s monopoly – or quasi monopoly – of crucial knowledge. Before the introduction of writing, it took oral form. The subjects covered matters temporal as well as sacred. In those cultures, like Hinduism, where most practical matters were sacrilized, access to religious materials – the mythic eschatology, prayers, rituals – was crucial to consolidating the power of a priesthood in alliance with warrior castes. That alliance, overt or tacit, has been the foundation stone of elite rulership and economic control throughout history. Only ove
Thereafter, the move to Delhi was to symbolise a new alliance with Indians for whom the city had historical associations.
“It was an altogether different kind of empire that was being envisaged, which saw a greater devolution of power to the provinces, and by implication a system that was more responsive to local Indian needs,” writes historian Swapna Liddle in her book,
“If an overarching imperial structure was to be the future of the British Raj, no better capital could be found that Delhi – the seat of the great erstwhile empires of India. Since the early thirteenth century it had functioned, with a few interregnums, as a capital of important powers – the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal empire.”