Raffles by Victoria Glendinning

Raffles by Victoria Glendinning

Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781-1826) was the charismatic and persuasive founder of Singapore and Governor of Java. An English adventurer, disobedient employee of the East India Company, utopian imperialist, linguist, zoologist and civil servant, he carved an extraordinary (though brief) life for himself in South East Asia. The tropical, disease-ridden settings of his story are as dramatic as his own trajectory - an obscure young man with no advantages other than talent and obsessive drive, who changed history by establishing - without authority - on the wretchedly unpromising island of Singapore, a settlement which has become a world city. After a turbulent time in the East Indies, Raffles returned to the UK and turned to his other great interests - botany and zoology. He founded London Zoo in 1825, a year before his death. Raffles remains a controversial figure, and in the first biography for over forty years, Victoria Glendinning charts his prodigious rise within the social and historical contexts of his world. His domestic and personal life was vivid and shot through with tragedy. His own end was sad, though his fame immortal.

At lastA truly magnificent biography of the most incorrigible of empire-builders. Victoria Glendinning has produced a judicious and utterly compelling account of the man who would change the map of South East Asia -- John Keay
Praise for Trollope 'Majestic, capacious, compelling and clear-sighted * Daily Telegraph *

Victoria Glendinning is a prizewinning biographer, the author of lives of Elizabeth Bowen, Vita Sackville-West, Edith Sitwell, Trollope and Leonard Woolf. She has also written three novels, The Grown-Ups, Electricity and Flight. She is a Vice-President of English PEN, Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded a CBE in 1998. Born in Yorkshire, she now lives in Somerset and London.

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9781781250259
ISBN 10	1781250251
Titel	Raffles
Autor	Victoria Glendinning
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Paperback
Verlag	Profile Books Ltd
Erscheinungsjahr	2012-11-01
Seitenanzahl	352
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.
Hinweis	Nicht verfügbar