Kolkata is making the biggest effort ever to re-invent itself as an attractive place of culture as well as business and tourism.

The basis for this has always been there, ever since the little fishing village of Kalikata became a fort for the East India Company in 1696. The British mispronounced it for 250 years as Calcutta, and now the Indians have got back to calling it by a version of its original name.

For at least a hundred of these years it was perhaps the most grand and splendid Victorian city in the whole world and all of this magnificence is still there, although some of it is in need of maintenance and cleaning up.