This study examines the hundreds of secular and religious buildings, urban residential and commercial foundations, and public monuments commissioned in Lucknow and Oudh between 1722 and 1856 by the fabulously rich Nawabs of Oudh and their Court, the English East India Company, and others.

The author started writing as a child. By seven wanted to be an architect. By twenty-four had become a builder. By thirty-four had become an architect registered and working in the UK. At the age of fifty he decided that architecture as a discipline was a social science of some sort. On this basis he earned a masters at UCL, then a PHD at Heriot Watt for discovering and defending philosophical position based on interpretation that he now calls thermenutics. When teaching about cultural contexts at the university of Ulster architectural school (2001 a " 2010) the link between perception and emotion became central to his interest. At which point he retired to write about understanding, in a series of books, this one being the fourth. The first three were about sharing the management of understanding. This fourth is about the way we share the management of understanding by way of conversations between us that allow us to understand each other.