IMPERIAL VANITIES: The Adventures of the Baker Brothers and Gordon of Khartoum - Softcover

Thompson, Brian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006532217 ISBN 13: 9780006532217

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2010

Synopsis

‘A Victorian drama of three intertwined lives set against a backcloth of the greatest empire the world has ever seen. By degrees heroic, poignant, whimsical and tragic, Brian Thompson’s wonderful book is precisely what that much-misused cliché “rattling good yarn” might have been coined to describe.’ RICHARD HOLMES

'Victorian Britain, that seemingly most conformist of ages, was in fact teeming with eccentrics. The fabulous Baker Brothers were eccentric in a conformist way for the time: Sir Samuel searched for the source of the Nile; Baker Pasha became leader of the Ottoman army. But it was that epitome of empire, and epitome of the Christian English gentleman, who was the most peculiar of them all: 'Chinese' Gordon is finally depicted as the anarchist he really was as he marched to his death against the Mahdi. It is Thompson's triumph that he gives these characters, straitjacketed first by their time, and then by history, the freedom to dance across the page once more.' JUDITH FLANDERS

Imperial Vanities is an adventure story in the high tradition, ranging from the Upper Nile, to Ceylon, Egypt and the slave markets of the Balkans. Livingstone, Speke and Burton also make an appearance, with the shadowy and elusive Laurence Oliphant spying from the sidelines. Written with Thompson's masterly touch, this is history at its best.

'A tale of Empire at its most eccentric. Part biography, part history, part adventure yarn, Imperial Vanities is an ingeniously enjoyable read.' Fergus Fleming

About this title

Product Description:

This title recounts the beginnings of the end of the British Empire through three men - the explorer Samuel Baker, whose second wife was a slave; his brother Valentine, who indecently assaulted a girl on a train and their friend Gordon of Khartoum, who preferred the company of men and the Bible.

Review:

On Brian Thompson’s previous book:

'Georgina Weldon's life is a story so richly worth telling as to make the common run of biographies seem sadly dull. Elegant in style, at once sensational and substantial in content, this book is a surprise and delight.'’ Lucy Hughes Hallet, Sunday Times

‘One of the funniest books of the year. It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at Mrs Weldon's disastrous career.' Miranda Seymour, TLS

'Georgina Weldon is the kind of subject biographers dream about...But what makes Thompson's extraordinarily accomplished book so marvellous is his ability to get inside her preposterous skin.' Kathryn Hughes, Sunday Telegraph

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0006532217
• ISBN 13: 9780006532217
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 312