ahem, ‘scuse me Pearly, krooks will be krooks, but with all due respect to "kooks" don’t get confused as to who leads the world in that department -g-
heres a bet you know of this fellow from your illustrious Victorian past for example - quite a controversial but enigmatic dude - Sir Richard Francis Burton - name ring a bell, spent quite a bit of time in Afghanistan as a spy back in the day. To protect his reputation and her a$$ probably, his wife burnt all his unpublished writings when he died - interesting story. europaworld.org
heres a blurb from amazon
This masterpiece of history and biography turns the real-life adventures of Burton into a riveting tale...The last great word on the last great explorer of the colonial age." -Wall Street Journal.
A New York Times best seller when it was first published, Rice's biography is the gripping story of a fierce, magnetic, and brilliant man whose real-life accomplishments are the stuff of legend. Rice retraces Burton's steps as the first European adventurer to search for the source of the Nile; to enter, disguised, the forbidden cities of Mecca and Medina; and to travel through remote stretches of India, the Near East, and Africa. From his spying exploits to his startling literary accomplishments (the discovery and translation of the Kama Sutra and his seventeen-volume translation of Arabian Nights), Burton was an engrossing, larger-than-life Victorian figure, and Rice's splendid biography lays open a portrayal as dramatic, complicated, and compelling as the man himself.
amazon.com |
