Wilberforce-Bell Collection: The Delhi Durbar. Photographer(s): Mirza and Sons, H.A.

Green full leather bound album measuring 363 x 480 mm, with stitched cloth protective jacket, containing prints mounted on page within white borders. Top right-hand corner of each page bears the gold-stamped emblem of the Star of India with the legend 'Heaven's Light Our Guide'. Captions written in ink in Wilberforce-Bell's hand. The album documents events associated with the great Delhi Durbar from the landing of King George V and Queen Mary at Bombay on 2 December 1911 to their departure on 12 January 1912. The durbar, held to celebrate the coronation of King George V earlier in 1911, was organized by the Viceroy Lord Hardinge at huge expense, over £660,000 being spent in the construction of two huge intersecting amphitheatres, the larger holding some 100,000 spectators, with a smaller, more exclusive enclosure for the princes and nobles. Apart from the splendour of the event itself, the main political significance of the occasion lay in the announcement of the rescinding of Curzon's 1905 partition of Bengal, and the proposed transfer of the imperial capital from Calcutta to Delhi. The photographs relating to the Durbar and associated events are by Vernon and Co, with a series of small-format views of architectural monuments in the Delhi area by Mirza and Sons.

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