Maharaja: the Splendour of India's Royal Courts

In his review of the exhibition, the the splendour of India's Royal Courts at London’s Victoria and Albert museum, Michael Glover wrote:

It would be difficult to find a more visually ravishing show than this one in the whole of London. The objects – from palm leaf fronds on the end of tapering silver stems to cool an emperor's brow, to the silver accoutrements of an elephant; from gorgeous Indian miniatures showing shapely young female royals depending, languorously, from the end of a kite, to paintings of tremendous royal processions that seem to go on and on and on, at such a languid pace, until we run out of wall space – are dazzling, and the setting, from first to last, coyly razzmatazz…

We can scarcely believe that the entire spectacle of the exhibition itself is not a cunning fiction of some kind because it seems, set down as it is in this most elegant of Victorian interiors, to lack almost everything that we know India to be, and to have been: the dust, the teeming, hands-thrusting million upon million who never stop coming at you, even when you are locked inside the very finest, shiniest Mercedes tour bus that Cox & Kings can ever hope to provide.

Click here or on the picture on the right to get a glimpse of the V+A’s opulent exhibition.

Or you can visit the home of such indulgence at Lallgarh Palace with a seven night package available from Greaves India until 19 th December 2009. Prices start from £1285 per person based on two people sharing a double room including return. For information see www.itcwelcomgroup.in