The princes faded so entirely from the scene that their days of glory now seem as distant as those of the Moghuls. Their palaces have become museums, schools or crumbling ruins. Some went abroad, some into business or government service. In 1973, after three years of struggle, the Indian supreme court upheld a constitutional amendment which terminated the princes' concessions that had been granted in 1947 in return for their peaceful accession to the Indian Union.

Of the tented city, which was dismantled in a fortnight, and of the great Durbar arena, vestiges survive today in Coronation Park, an uncultivated tract full of trees and teeming with birds and wild animals. You can still find one of the 16 stations, abandoned and mysterious. Nearby, stone and bronze figures of proud provincial governors stand on their plinths. Other plinths lie empty, still awaiting their statues, which remain in their original settings in the cities where after Independence the new administrators, respectful of India's heritage, resolved to keep them. In the heart of the park, above crumbling stone steps, towers a red stone figure of George V. To visit the park, to see the curve of the old amphitheatre and to commune among its relics in all their forlorn glory, is to grasp the sheer scale of the Delhi Durbar and of the empire it celebrated.