Sylvia Queen Of The Headhunters

Author : Philip Eade
Publisher : Hachette UK
ISBN 13 : 1474609651
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.54/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Sylvia, Queen Of The Headhunters written by Philip Eade and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2018-01-04 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The biography of the last Ranee of Sarawak, born into the aristocracy as Sylvia Brett in 1885 and destined to become 'Queen of the Headhunters'. 'Jaw-dropping ... If you thought White Mischief the last word in English expatriate decadence, you haven't yet met Sylvia and the Brookes' The Times Sylvia Brooke was the consort of His Highness Sir Vyner Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, the last in a bizarre dynasty of English despots who ruled their jungle kingdom on Borneo until 1946. The White Rajahs were long held up as model rulers, but the spectacularly eccentric behaviour of Ranee Sylvia - self-styled Queen of the Headhunters - changed everything. This is the compelling story of her part in their downfall.

Author : Philip Eade
Publisher : Orion
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 416 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Sylvia written by Philip Eade and published by Orion. This book was released on 2007 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sylvia Brooke (1885-1971) was one of the more exotic figures of the twentieth century. Otherwise known as the Ranee of Sarawak, she was the consort (and by custom, slave) of Sir Vyner Brooke, the last White Rajah, whose family had ruled the jungle kingdom of Sarawak on Borneo for three generations. They had their own flag, revenue, postage stamps, and money, and each White Rajah had the power of life and death over his subjects - Malays, Chinese and headhunting Dyak tribesmen.The regime of the White Rajahs was long deemed superior to any in the British Empire. But rather like the French monarchy before the revolution, by the 1930s there was a sharp decline in their power and prestige. When one of the Brooke daughters married a bandleader and another a wrestler, Sarawak threatened to become a music-hall joke. At the centre of this perceived decadence was Ranee Sylvia, author of eleven books, extravagantly-dressed socialite and incorrigible self-dramatist, described by the press as 'that most charming of despots', and by her own brother as 'a female Iago'. The Colonial Office branded her 'a dangerous woman, full of Machiavellian schemes to alter the succession, and spectacularly vulgar in her behaviour. After observing the Ranee dancing with two prostitutes in a nightclub, then taking them back to the palace to paint their portraits, a visiting MP from Westminster concluded that 'a more undignified woman it would be hard to find'.Sylvia, Queen of the Headhunters chronicles the extraordinary life of the Ranee, with a supporting cast including Sylvia's father, a celebrated courtier in love with his own son; her whimsical and sexually incontinent husband, Rajah Vyner; the Rajah's unhinged, Rasputinesque private secretary; and the Rajah's nephew, whose folie de grandeur as the young heir gave way (after he was thwarted) to an interest in world peace and flying saucers.

Author : Philip Eade
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 1250045894
Total Pages : 385 pages
Book Rating : 4.98/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Sylvia, Queen of the Headhunters written by Philip Eade and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Documents the story of the world's first white Ranee, the controversial consort of Sir Vyner Brooke, covering her relationship with her family, her role as her husband's private secretary, her decadence, and her literary achievements.

Author : Philip Eade
Publisher : Picador USA
ISBN 13 : 1250143292
Total Pages : 458 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Evelyn Waugh written by Philip Eade and published by Picador USA. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named a Best Book of the Year by The Guardian, The Sunday Times, and the Financial Times A completely fresh view of one of the most gifted—and fascinating—writers of our time, the enigmatic author of Brideshead Revisited Graham Greene hailed Evelyn Waugh as “the greatest novelist of my generation,” and in recent years Waugh’s reputation has only grown. Now, half a century after Waugh’s death in 1966, with Evelyn Waugh, Philip Eade has delivered a hugely entertaining biography that is both authoritative and full of new information, some of it sensational. Drawing on extensive unseen primary sources, Eade’s book sheds new light on many of the key phases and themes of Waugh’s life: his difficult relationship with his embarrassingly sentimental father; his formative homosexual affairs at Oxford; his unrequited love for various Bright Young Things; his disastrous first marriage; his momentous conversion to Roman Catholicism; his unconventional yet successful second marriage; his checkered wartime career; and his shattering nervous breakdown. Along the way, we come to understand not only Waugh’s complex relationship with the aristocracy, but also the astonishing power of his wit, and the love, fear, and loathing that he variously inspired in others. Waugh was famously difficult, and Eade brilliantly captures the myriad facets of his character, even as he casts new light on the novels that have dazzled generations of readers.

Author : Fanny Parkes Parlby
Publisher : Penguin Books India
ISBN 13 : 9780143029885
Total Pages : 388 pages
Book Rating : 4.86/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Begums, Thugs and Englishmen written by Fanny Parkes Parlby and published by Penguin Books India. This book was released on 2003 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fanny Parkes, Who Lived In India Between 1822 And 1846, Was The Ideal Travel Writer Courageous, Indefatigably Curious And Determinedly Independent. Her Delightful Journal Traces Her Journey From Prim Memsahib, Married To A Minor Civil Servant Of The Raj, To Eccentric Sitar-Playing Indophile, Fluent In Urdu, Critical Of British Rule And Passionate In Her Appreciation Of Indian Culture. Fanny Is Fascinated By Everything, From The Trial Of The Thugs And The Efficacy Of Opium On Headaches To The Adorning Of A Hindu Bride. To Read Her Is To Get As Close As One Can To A True Picture Of Early Colonial India The Sacred And The Profane, The Violent And The Beautiful, The Straight-Laced Sahibs And The More Eccentric White Mughals Who Fell In Love With India And Did Their Best, Like Fanny, To Build Bridges Across Cultures.

Author : Philip Eade
Publisher : Picador
ISBN 13 : 1250045908
Total Pages : 385 pages
Book Rating : 4.04/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Sylvia, Queen of the Headhunters written by Philip Eade and published by Picador. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE EXTRAORDINARY TALE OF SYLVIA BROOKE, THE LAST WHITE RULER OF THE JUNGLE KINGDOM OF BORNEO Sylvia Brooke was one of the more exotic and outrageous figures of the twentieth century. Otherwise known as the Ranee of Sarawak, she was the wife of Sir Vyner Brooke, the last White Rajah, whose family had ruled the jungle kingdom of Sarawak on Borneo for three generations. They had their own flag, revenue, postage stamps, and money, as well as the power of life and death over their subjects—Malays, Chinese, and headhunting Dyak tribesmen. The regime of the White Rajahs was long romanticized, but by the 1930s, their power and prestige were crumbling. At the center of Sarawak's decadence was Sylvia, author of eleven books, mother to three daughters, an extravagantly dressed socialite whose behavior often offended and usually defied social convention. Sylvia did her best to manipulate the line of succession in favor of her daughters, but by 1946, Japan had invaded Sarawak, sending Sylvia and her husband into exile, ending one of the more unusual chapters of British colonial rule. Philip Eade's Sylvia, Queen of the Headhunters is a fascinating look at the wild and debauched world of a woman desperate to maintain the last remains of power in an exotic and dying kingdom.

Author : Philip Eade
Publisher : HarperCollins UK
ISBN 13 : 0007435924
Total Pages : 89 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Young Prince Philip: His Turbulent Early Life written by Philip Eade and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2011-06-09 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sunday Times bestseller A Radio 4 Book of the Week, June 2021 ‘Highly readable ... deserves to take its place among the first rank of modern royal biographies’ Daily Mail ‘The narrative is as suspenseful as any thriller. Truly, an excellent read’ Lynn Barber, Sunday Times

Author : John Banville
Publisher : Harlequin
ISBN 13 : 1488077193
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Snow written by John Banville and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *NATIONAL BESTSELLER* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA HISTORICAL DAGGER AWARD* A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year A New York Times Editors’ Choice Pick “Banville sets up and then deftly demolishes the Agatha Christie format…superbly rich and sophisticated.”—New York Times Book Review The incomparable Booker Prize winner’s next great crime novel—the story of a family whose secrets resurface when a parish priest is found murdered in their ancestral home Detective Inspector St. John Strafford has been summoned to County Wexford to investigate a murder. A parish priest has been found dead in Ballyglass House, the family seat of the aristocratic, secretive Osborne family. The year is 1957 and the Catholic Church rules Ireland with an iron fist. Strafford—flinty, visibly Protestant and determined to identify the murderer—faces obstruction at every turn, from the heavily accumulating snow to the culture of silence in the tight-knit community he begins to investigate. As he delves further, he learns the Osbornes are not at all what they seem. And when his own deputy goes missing, Strafford must work to unravel the ever-expanding mystery before the community’s secrets, like the snowfall itself, threaten to obliterate everything. Beautifully crafted, darkly evocative and pulsing with suspense, Snow is “the Irish master” (New Yorker) John Banville at his page-turning best. Don't miss John Banville's next novel, The Lock-up! Other riveting mysteries from John Banville: April in Spain

Author : Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400843472
Total Pages : 366 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book In the Realm of the Diamond Queen written by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this highly original and much-anticipated ethnography, Anna Tsing challenges not only anthropologists and feminists but all those who study culture to reconsider some of their dearest assumptions. By choosing to locate her study among Meratus Dayaks, a marginal and marginalized group in the deep rainforest of South Kalimantan, Indonesia, Tsing deliberately sets into motion the familiar and stubborn urban fantasies of self and other. Unusual encounters with her remarkably creative and unconventional Meratus friends and teachers, however, provide the opportunity to rethink notions of tradition, community, culture, power, and gender--and the doing of anthropology. Tsing's masterful weaving of ethnography and theory, as well as her humor and lucidity, allow for an extraordinary reading experience for students, scholars, and anyone interested in the complexities of culture. Engaging Meratus in wider conversations involving Indonesian bureaucrats, family planners, experts in international development, Javanese soldiers, American and French feminists, Asian-Americans, right-to-life advocates, and Western intellectuals, Tsing looks not for consensus and coherence in Meratus culture but rather allows individual Meratus men and women to return our gaze. Bearing the fruit from the lively contemporary conversations between anthropology and cultural studies, In the Realm of the Diamond Queen will prove to be a model for thinking and writing about gender, power, and the politics of identity.

Author : Chris Thomas King
Publisher : Chicago Review Press
ISBN 13 : 1641604476
Total Pages : 581 pages
Book Rating : 4.75/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Blues written by Chris Thomas King and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 581 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A fresh new perspective that will be a true revolution to readers and will open new lines of discussion on . . . the importance of the city of New Orleans for generations to come." —Dr. Michael White, jazz clarinetist, composer, and Keller Endowed Chair at Xavier University of LA An untold authentic counter-narrative blues history and the first written by an African American blues artist All prior histories on the blues have alleged it originated on plantations in the Mississippi Delta. Not true, says author Chris Thomas King. In The Blues, King present facts to disprove such myths. This book is the first to argue the blues began as a cosmopolitan art form, not a rural one. As early as 1900, the sound of the blues was ubiquitous in New Orleans. The Mississippi Delta, meanwhile, was an unpopulated sportsman's paradise—the frontier was still in the process of being cleared and drained for cultivation.? Expecting these findings to be controversial in some circles, King has buttressed his conclusions with primary sources and years of extensive research, including a sojourn to West Africa and interviews with surviving folklorists and blues researchers from the 1960s folk-rediscovery epoch.? New Orleans, King states, was the only place in the Deep South where the sacred and profane could party together without fear of persecution, creating the blues.