India's palaces, spectacular memorials to the greatest surge of royal building that the world has ever seen, epitomize the opulence and exoticism of the subcontinent's past. Built by proud Rajahs the palaces were often statements of wealth and autonomy directed at the governing British who would be graciously received into luxury undreamt of in Victorian England. After 1957, stripped of their revenue and purpose, the princes found that these splendid symbols of their former wealth and power had become white elephants overnight. Now, however, with the growth of tourism in India these once decaying palaces are being opened as hotels, offering visitors hospitality in the homes of India's former ruling class. In beautiful surroundings, often miles from the nearest city, overlooking vast lakes and mountain ranges, daunting plains or untamed jungles, guests walk down corridors that once echoed with the whisperings of courtiers and concubines, and sleep beneath a canopy reserved for important visiting viceroys. Where the hotels are still in the hands of royal owners, who retain the highest status in their villages, an added attraction is that the visitor is treated like an honoured guest by the local community and is privileged to experience a facet of Indian life that has changed little since the days of the Raj. That fabled period of British rule, immortalized by a host of writers, from Rudyard Kipling to M.M. Kaye, still gives an extra spice to the appeal of India. For the Westerner, the very name conjures up thrilling images of Moghuls and Maharajahs, panjandrums in pink pyjamas, warfare and ritual, adventure and romance. Even today, the former jewel in Victoria's crown remains a sublime paradox: partly familiar, because of its cheerfully selective assimilation of British culture, but still a world apart - infinitely complex and mysterious and still resplendent in the trappings of the past. Michael Sugich, who has travelled all over the subcontinent, from Kashmir to Kerala, describes the exotic history and architecture of over fifty formers palaces drawing on contemporary accounts to portray the often outrageous characters who commissioned the buildings and the awed Westerners who came to be impressed. Some, he found, have been restored to their former magnificence and are now run by international chains such as the Taj Hotel Group: others, their grandeur rather faded, rely on vestiges of past glory or the dignified presence of royal hosts to seduce the traveller. What nearly all of them possess is an elegant and idiosyncratic charm. Tourist attractions in their own right, they offer a unique experience of the lost flamboyant world of India.