Background
Doctor Irving was born in Hartford, Connecticut of Scottish-Canadian parents and was educated at Balliol College, Oxford. King"s College, Cambridge. And Yale University.
Doctor Irving was born in Hartford, Connecticut of Scottish-Canadian parents and was educated at Balliol College, Oxford. King"s College, Cambridge. And Yale University.
His book Indian Summer: Lutyens, Baker, and Imperial Delhi (Yale University Press, 1981 and Oxford University Press, 1982) is the story of the creation of New Delhi from 1911 to 1931, the grandest architectural undertaking in the history of the British Empire. The principal architects were the two leading practitioners of the day, Sir Edwin Lutyens and Sir Herbert Baker. He holds degrees in history and the history of art and architecture.
A Fellow of Berkeley College at Yale, he has taught at Yale, Wesleyan, Trinity College in Hartford, and the University of Virginia.
Doctor Irving has lectured at universities and museums on six continents. He has held research grants in India, Africa, Britain, and the United States, including a Fulbright Scholarship and Fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, American Institute of Indian Studies, American Council of Learned Societies, Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Doctor Irving has been a lifetime advocate and activist for historic preservation. During his studies at Yale in preparation for his dissertation, Mr.
Irving had been conducting research in India in 1968-1969.
Mr. Irving had placed all his research material in two trunks that were shipped from New Delhi to Hartford. Upon his return to Yale in 1969, he discovered that Pan American World Airways had lost his research.
The airline permitted Mr.
Irving to visit John F. Kennedy Airport to search through 16 acres (not 60, as stated in a news article) of unclaimed luggage. He was able to locate one trunk, but the contents had become damaged and useless because of exposure to the weather. Mr. Irving filed a successful $15,000 (not $35,000, as stated in a press article) lawsuit in order to recoup expenses accrued on his return to India to redo his entire research and photography.
Discovered too late to be of use, the second trunk surfaced at a Boston airport warehouse after more than four years.
The completed dissertation became the basis for the award-winning book Indian Summer.