Too Much Time In The Noonday Sun?
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After reading this quite enjoyable, well-written book, you might be excused for thinking that the British Empire consisted mainly of very eccentric people.....who were hyperactive, to boot. You have Samuel Baker banging his way through Ceylon and Africa with his 21 pound rifle, shooting everything in sight (that is, when he isn't killing 300 pound wild boars with his foot-long, 3 pound knife.) Of course, when Sam was 32 he did stop off long enough at the slave auctions in the Balkans to buy a lovely, blonde, 17 year old Hungarian girl. This was Florence, who eventually became Sam's 2nd wife. (His 1st wife had died.) The upper-crust back home weren't too impressed by this, to say the least. Then we have Sam's brother, Valentine Baker, a promising cavalry officer who ruined his career by making a pass at a woman on a train one fine day. She apparently didn't fancy him and started screaming blue murder out the train window. From the evidence, it doesn't appear that Val actually tried to "ravage" her. He did touch her on the leg and tried to kiss her. Back in Victorian times, that's all it took to bring dishonor down on you. It didn't help that Queen Victoria got the scoop on all of this and refused to let Val continue serving with his regiment. She had a long memory and never forgave him. (One wonders what she would have thought of Bill Clinton's Oval Office antics!) That brings us to Charles 'Chinese' Gordon, who had a date with destiny in Khartoum. Gordon was by far the oddest man of the lot. One wonders how he could have ever been placed in a position of authority. Just before being sent to Khartoum to try to evacuate the garrison, the very religious Gordon had been all set to go to the Congo in the employ of that famous humanitarian, King Leopold of Belgium. (I'm being facetious about the humanitarian part. Leopold turned the Congo into his own personal slave-labor colony. Gordon apparently wasn't too fussy about who he worked for.) Islamic fundamentalism didn't mean much to Gordon. He thought that Mohamed Ahmed (known as the Mahdi) was just some kind of "gangster" who wanted to make the Sudan his own personal fiefdom. Gordon was convinced that if he could meet the Mahdi one-on-one he could straighten everything out. Needless to say, things didn't work out the way Gordon planned. He wound up decapitated. Those amazing Gordonian eyes could no longer work their magic. Many other eccentrics appear in these pages- David Livingstone, James Hanning Speke (who enjoyed measuring the busts and limbs of African girls with a tape) and several who had nothing to do with exploration. One of my favorites was Lord Hatherton, who had estates in Staffordshire. In the parish church he attended, he had the pews for his family taken out and they were replaced with armchairs and a working fireplace. Hatherton would rattle the pages of "The Times" to indicate when he thought the sermon had gone on long enough. One disadvantage of Mr. Thompson's decision to tell the stories of 3 men in such a short book is that, in the end, none of the men seem real. We don't ever feel that we really know what made them tick. We can observe their actions, but that is all. But, still, the book can be appreciated on two levels- as an adventure story, and as a cautionary tale regarding the limitations and responsibilities of empire.
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THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF EMPIRE
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This is one of the funniest books I've read, and one of the saddest. Ostensibly telling the story of the lives of three Victorian men - two soldiers and an explorer - IMPERIAL VANITIES does more than most biographies, in that it conveys the God-intoxicated lunacies of the world of the British Empire. It is beautifully illustrated, and has the best last page of any book I've read this year. Buy it.
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A deeply rewarding read.
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This is a page turner and a deeply rewarding read. Here is a clear new look at some of the major events of the l9th Century such as the Crimean War, the discovery of the source of the Nile and the fervour of those at home to end the slave trade. But Thompson includes details not to be found in other books that deal with this era: Sam Baker's own design for a hunting suit, Gordon's [some of them completely potty] obsessions and Val Baker's sad moment on a Home Counties train - no corridors in those days so Miss Dickinson escaped from him by clinging to the outside of the train. Whatever we now think of Victoria's empire, it's our own past brought to life here by Brian Thompson with a wry and witty texture to each page.
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