The Walls of India

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

Armchair travellers will delight to share in George Woodcock’s familiarity with the subcontinent. This informal and leisurely re-visit to cities, towns, and sites he has long known and loved is a delicately attractive book embellished by Toni Onley’s superb watercolours. The unique Indian combination of the astonishingly old and the new; the decaying vestiges of the departed Raj and the bustling modernity of the twentieth century; and as always, in any look at India, the very wealthy few and the tragically impoverished multitudes, are features of the timeless land that has attracted travellers over all recorded time. But these travellers, Woodcock, Onley, and the others of their party, came with the intention of helping where help is so desperately needed. The proceeds of the book are to be devoted to rural medical aid in India, through the Canada India Village Aid Association.