Great Eastern Hotel, Calcutta

Around the time this postcard was published, H. St.J. B. Philby, the father of the famous British spy Kim Philby (born in Ambala in 1912) and then serving in India, wrote in his memoir Arabian Days (Robert Hale, 1948):

"The Great Eastern Hotel of Calcutta was a horrible place in those days and the food was disgusting." He does continue though by saying that "Life in Calcutta was on the whole pleasant enough, particularly after I had purchased a Ford car of the old T-model and could get about more freely," (pp. 88-89) which seems to be the very car parked in the foreground of the hotel.