On Friday, as a part of the hotel’s 108th birthday celebrations, a book – The Taj at Apollo Bunder – was launched by Tata Sons chairman Ratan Tata.

Co-authored by British historian Charles Allen, the book is a product of three decades of archival research and interviews with a host of people who lived and worked at the hotel, “right from former maharajas to plumbers”, as historian & author Sharada Dwivedi puts it.

The book chronicles the history of the Taj as a hotel as well as an iconic part of the city  throughout the country’s freedom movement and up to the November 2008 terror attacks in which it was a target.