Ooty Preserved: A Victorian Hill Station in India

Preserved...and rather charmingly commemorated in this quintessentially Victorian village in the Blue Hills of South India--the Queen of the Hill Stations (superseding Kipling's Simla)--a little "patch of England" where the sun has never set. Mrs. Panter-Downes makes a tour of Ootacumund, Ooty, lovely Ooty from its 19th-century existence as a small spiritual spa with tonic air for English exiles to today, with its dwindling number of Europeans (chiefly widows and daughters) and the faint encroachment of modern times--a film factory. Around she goes, from its Government House to its Library to its Club to its Old cemetery which Sir Richard Burton said was already "so extensive, so well stocked" over a hundred years ago. Along with its photographs (some of old aquatints) this is a somewhat pleasing but limited literary daguerrotype with amusing period appointments. Partial New Yorker appearance.--Kirkus