19:22

Empire

I was reading a coffee-table book about Delhi - the imperial city created by Lutyens. From where we are now it seems incredible that then - still within living memory - the British could believe that they could hold India, one of the oldest and greatest civilizations in the word, as a colony and mark that belief with the creation of a capital of the scale and grandeur of Delhi.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and we know, of course, that barely ten years later it was all over. But the mindset then was obviously one of hundreds of years. What an extraordinary arrogance that was and, though I hesitate long before making the comparison, it reminded me more than anything of Speer's plans for an imperial Berlin suitable for a thousand year Reich.

Both lasted about the same time.
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