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ARMSTEAD, CHRISTOPHER Princely Pageant - H. Christopher H. Armstead, Technical Advisor to the United Nations - 12 Years in Immediate Post - Colonial India with His Exalted Highness the Nizam of Hyderabad and Berar
London: Thomas Harmsworth Pub, 1987. First Edition. Hard Cover in Dust Jacket. Photos. 5-1/2 x 8-1/4 " 0948807059 1987 Hardcover in DJ 1st ... Brand new from publisher ... Never opened, Never owned, Never marked ... Excellent Gift Giving quality ... Jacket protected in New, non-stick clear Mylar sleeve ... This is a handsome book ... 5-1/2 x 8-1/4" in size ... red textured boards with Gold gilt lettering impressed on spine, in glossy jacket with sepia tone photographs of the author and of colonial era India & of the Indian prince, on the front & back ... 248 pages with index and glossary ; illustrated with map of British Administered Territory of the Nizam in India, plus Glossy B&W photographs , many full-page ... including of the Nazim's Silver Jubilee banquet in 1937 , Her Imperial Highness The Princess Durreshevar , daughter of the last Caliph of Islam and Sultan of Turkey ... Prince Moazam Jah Bahadur, second son of the Nizam ... The Princess Niloufer ... The Saracenic architecture of the Hyderabad Power Station ... machine shop, mill, woodworking shop ... the interiors and exteriors of Colonial official residences ... The Bombay Light Horse guard on parade ... Photographs of the vaults and safes at the Mint ... Char Minar palace ... Kilwat Mubarak Palace ... The Nawab of Sattari ... and much more ... Mint Master , Superintendent of Stamps, Chief Electrical Engineer, Director of State Workshops, Warden of Weights & Measures, Currency Officer ... author Christopher Armstead, son of a London surgeon, and grandson of two Royal Academy members, at one time carried all these titles , in his work in freshly post-Colonial India, in the major Principality of Hyderabad ... Armstead was born in England in the year 1903 ... After the usual Edwardian classical education at a prep school, he joined the Royal Navl College Osborne and Dartmouth, as a cadet, and later graduated from London as an engineer ... His first contact with the ' sub continent ' ... India ... was in 1925, when he took up an appointment in the Indian city of Bombay ( now known as Mumbai ) , for a few years ... In the 1930s he then returned to India, and spent 12 years in the service of an Indian Prince ... His Exalted Highness The Nizam of Hyderabad ... in various capacities with rather exotic titles ... which collectively amounted to him being a bit of a Grand Poohbah ... or, as he puts it ... a sort of " Pooh Bahship " ... Much later, in 1963 , he was appointed as a technical advisor to the United Nations, based out of New York ... In his later years he eased himself gradually into 'retirement' by acting as a freelance consulting engineer, based back at home in Dartmouth Devon, England ... His work has enabled him to travel widely on all continents, and his prior book ' Geothermal Energy ' is the standard on the subject... When the British departed from India in 1947 they left behind them a valuable heritage of communications, mills, factories, power stations and other public services which they had built for the Indian people, and which were all , at the time of departure, efficient ' going concerns ' ... Little has been written about, or by, those Britons who created the backbone of the modern Indian economy ... they were the British engineers ... Christopher Armstead was one of those men ... Almost by chance he drifted , in the 1930s , into the greatest of all the Indian Principalities, Hyderabad, at a time when the embers of feudalism were still glowing brightly ... Until 1948 Hyderabad State was ruled by the powerful Nizam, natural successor to the Moghul, Mogul, Emperors of Delhi, and , in his day, the Nizam was the richest man on earth ... Within his dominions the medieval and the modern, absolute autocracy and progressive paternalism, happily coexisted ... This book is a fascinating but light-hearted description of a few of the facets of life in that once mighty state during its twilight , by a British man who was in the employ of the Nazim during those pivotal historical years ... " Princely Pageant " ... by Christopher Armstead ... published by Thomas Harmsworth Publishing, London 1987 ... Hardcover in Dustjacket First Edition ... Brand New Gift Giving quality ***. New/New .
Offered for US$ 49.95 by: Cavendish International Books & Music - Book number: 6086
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