There is an Agra beyond the coffee table book and the tourist brochure waiting to be discovered. This anthology of Thomas Smith’s writing attempts to set the reader off on that journey of discovery. Smith was a scholar, a historian and a journalist who wrote about the people and places of Agra after painstaking research and enquiry and with rare humour and sensitivity. For over five decades, between 1930 and 1995, he collected material including the stories and legends that surround the city. Much of what Thomas Smith wrote has been lost or destroyed but some of the best were carefully preserved by his son Neville. This collection of Smith’s writings, deftly organized and introduced by Shailaja Kathuria, provide a fresh perspective on the familiar and also help us experience an Agra that we did not know existed. A map of present-day Agra locates some of the more important landmarks mentioned in the book. The book also contains a preface by Thomas Smith’s equally talented son R.V. Smith author of The Delhi that No-one Knows.
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