
This is the first biography in decades of the ` Father of Singapore`. Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781-1826) was the charismatic & persuasive founder of Singapore & Governor of Java. An English adventurer, disobedient employee of the East India Company, utopian imperialist, linguist, zoologist & 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 & 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 & turned to his other great interests
- botany & zoology. He founded London Zoo in 1826, the year of his death. Raffles remains a controversial figure, & in the first biography for over forty years, Victoria Glendinning charts his prodigious rise within the social & historical contexts of his world. His domestic & personal life was vivid & shot through with tragedy. His own end was sad, but his fame immortal.