Book Description
"Starting in a hollowed log of wood--some thousand miles up a river with infinitesimal prospect of returning, I ask myself `Why?' and the only echo is `damned fool!...the Devil drives.'"
So wrote Richard Francis Burton, while preparing for an exploration of the lower Congo in 1863. Tormented by the question of "why?", his answer "the devil drives" applies not only to his explorations, but to the whole of his turbulent life. The nature of his demon, the source of his restlessness, has baffled many biographers.
Drawing from Burton's own published works and from the few manuscripts that managed to escape destruction by Lady Burton, Fawn Brodie explains the "why?" and in doing so creates a fascinating portrait.
Customer Reviews:
A Fascinating Life Well Presented in this Biography.......2007-09-03
The author presents a very thoroughly researched and well written biographical book on a fascinating life of an early British explorer of East Africa (Burton was the first European explorer to report his "findings" of what is today called Lake Tangenyika). At times the presentation can become tedious but on the whole this is a book well worth reading and a life well worth knowing more about. Beyond his explorations Burton lived, wrote, fought, loved and experienced life to the fullest extent. As many of the other comments from other readers have suggested, his life and how he lived it can be a positive inspiration.
Indiana Jones in the flesh..........2007-04-23
Richard Burton was an enigmatic, sour, oftentimes neurotic voyeur with the intention of beating his contemporaries and traveling the globe learning and exposing the cultures he came across. Ms. Brodie also has a tie with writing other biographies of sensational men (Joseph Smith, Jr of Mormon fame) and this book is an educated insight into Richard Burton's travels, motives, and surroundings. The maps included along with photographs, illustrations, and excerpts of Burton's own words help move the narrative along. It can be 'old English' tedious, but is well worth the delve into a man that went against the grain in every way.
Intriquing and Sometimes Painful.......2006-11-20
This is a captivating account of a unique and restless individual driven to observe and graphically document the often very cruel life of the Middle East and Africa in the nineteenth-century. This will not bore.
WONDERFUL BIOGRAPHY - I AM GRATEFUL FOR THIS ONE.......2006-07-06
I read this one years ago, when it was first published. This was my first expierence and admittedly my first encounter with this remarkable man. This has lead me, over the years, to read much more of Sir Richard Burton. Each work I read, each bit of information I gather, I am even for fascinated with this individual, his accomplishments and his writings. This has been a nice reading hobby for me over the past number of year and it all started with Ms. Brodie's work. I am grateful. The book is well written, well researched and is very, very readable. Highly recommend this one.
Towering Individual of the 19th Century.......2004-11-22
Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton would be a worthy study for anyone interested in the potentials of the human being. A man of multiple talents and achievements, to count and adequately summarize them all would be an improbable task. This man accomplished more in a lifetime than most of us mere mortals could in several. As a 19th century British explorer, he stands with the legendary - Livingston, Stanley, Baker and Speke. What set him apart from these luminaries, towers above in fact, was is scholarship. His writing talents, publishing countless volumes, his uncanny lingual gift, (twenty-five languages, including several dialects that amount to over forty) and his inroads into anthropology, ethnology, religion and archaeology, make him one of the truly great individuals of the Victorian age. Brodie's treatment of Burton is a worthy tribute to the man, and after reading over four other life histories of Sir Richard; I can say with all honesty, that it is one of the best.
I have to admit that I have a severe aversion to that sixties literary trend of applying Freudian psychoanalysis in a biographical study. It is difficult enough analysing the living, let alone the dead and gone. Brodie is guilty of this method in this biography; however, she does it without taking anything away from the subject. Most all the typical psychoanalytical symptoms are present: the Oedipus complex, latent homosexuality, and preoccupations with sex in general. Brodie's analyses, though, is not a closed shop - she remains open to her subject. In other words, her psychoanalytic musings do not cloud the uniqueness and larger than life qualities of this man. It's a side issue, and therefore can be ignored.
What is so startling about Burton was his enormous passion to know, his tireless travels and recordings of the unknown and exotic. He not only was everything mentioned above, but a poet of talent, geologist, amateur physician, expert swordsman and skilful spy. A precursor to Freud, he studied the sexual customs of many cultures and was a fierce critic of Victorian values on the subject. This man's curiosity knew no bounds and he ensured he did not waste a minute of his sixty-nine years - a relatively short life considering what the man accomplished.
There are many biographies about Burton, but this one seems to encapsulate the man's spirit and zest for life. Brodie writes an enthralling biography and anyone interested in this towering figure of the 19th century, this text is highly recommended.
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- Back-of-the-envelope modeling
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Biology by Numbers: An Encouragement to Quantitative Thinking
Richard F. Burton
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Physiology by Numbers: An Encouragement to Quantitative Thinking
ASIN: 0521576989 |
Book Description
This textbook is both an introduction to quantitative biology and a guide for the number-shy. Richard Burton fosters a sense of the fundamental importance and usefulness of mathematical principles in biology, with a fascinating range of examples. The book is geared toward the nonmathematician, and covers the basics as well as various more advanced topics from many diverse biological disciplines. Questions and calculations encourage active participation without holding up the casual reader. A key feature is the structure of the book. Rather than building it around biological disciplines, Dr. Burton emphasizes the common ways of reasoning used in areas as diverse as insect and population growth, seed mortality, and sensory response (to mention a few that use logarithms).
Customer Reviews:
Back-of-the-envelope modeling.......2001-03-03
This is a primer on modeling for biologists. It is written to reduce mathematics fears of budding biologists. But it offers plenty of interesting biology for the mathematically oriented non-biologist (I hold a physics degree), but absolutely no new maths. The book proceeds by examples which use similar techniques but which may differ considerably: exponential relationship examples include pollen grains in sediments as well as attractiveness of dung for dungflies. For the mathematically proficient, this can be bedside reading, as most the calculations can be done mentally.
For the more mathematically inclined, Karl Sigmunds's book Games of Life offers wonderful mathematics of biology.
Customer Reviews:
Richard Burton: A Life - And What a Life it Was........2007-07-02
Melvyn Bragg's biography of Richard Burton (nee Richard Walter Jenkins) was absolutely top drawer, thanks not only to Mr. Bragg's wonderful, in depth writing style, but to the generosity of Burton's widow, Sally Hay, who gave the author unprecedented access to Mr. Burton's hitherto unpublished notebooks.
Burton was continually being discovered and mentored throughout his early days. Bragg deals with Burton's good fortune in being "adopted" by schoolteacher Philip Burton when he was a mere lad, and access to Philip's diaries show how Richard's native intelligence, passion and enthusiasm were harnessed and directed by Philip. The next mentor was the brilliant writer ("The Corn is Green"), director and actor, Emlyn Williams who first put the boy on the boards and got him to the BBC. Later Gielgud, Olivier, and Anthony Quayle would play a part in Burton's success.
If a man can be judged primarily based on the affect he had on other people, than Richard Burton was in that alone an absolute success. His well-documented generosity is evident from his earliest days as a reader of poetry and literature on BBC Radio, when he was lucky to garner 10 quid a reading and sent a portion of that back to the family (12 brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews). In his final days, when performing in a less than stellar mini-series with his magnificently talented daughter, Kate Burton, he passed on his civility and generosity to fellow actors, by teaching her to remain behind the camera during another actor's close-up so he/she would have a person to react to and with. He is beloved in his native Wales, whose tongue was his first language, whose sports teams he followed wherever he was in the world and in whose verdant green hillsides he built that voice that would echo across the stages of London, New York and on movie screens worldwide.
Richard Burton was no saint (unlike Becket, whom he played to perfection opposite Peter O'Toole). His appetite for wine, women and song remained with him throughout his life. In a strange and ironic quirk, Burton, who so revered family and womanhood/motherhood (idealized for him in his mother-sister, Cis) was flagrant in his infidelity to his first wife, Sybill Williams. Sybil Williams Burton in the best of British tradition had a stiff upper lip about he whole business, and maintained a solid homebase which Burton would inevitably return. And indeed for more than a decade this was the case; until he ventured to Rome for the filming of Cleopatra.
Bragg is even-handed in his portrayal of Elizabeth Taylor. She is neither villain or angel; but a woman of profound passions, a streetwise business sense and emotional life that may have brought on or at the very least greatly exasperated her numerous accidents and health issues. Their love was by all accounts like an earthquake. While Burton was mad for Taylor, he never expected this affair to end his marriage. Taylor, however was not just any conquest. Having lived through the machinations of a notorious stage mother, the heavy-handedness of Louis B. Mayer at MGM, the death of her other great love, Mike Todd and the public condemnation of he role in the Debbie-Eddie-Liz scandal and her notorious tough as nails negotiation of the first million dollar contract for Cleopatra, Elizabeth was a force to be reckoned with. Although she was known for the screaming and sometimes physically battering battles with Todd, Fisher and later with Burton, it was through her absolute acceptance in her role as Burton's Mistress, that she won her man. In fact, Taylor would play this role 2 years while Burton would traverse the Swiss Alps between his home in Celigny with Sybil and daughter, Kate and Taylor's home in Gstaad. Truthful, clever, a talented actress, a challenging partner, an endlessly exciting and loving lover, and in her salad days the most beautiful woman in the world; one can understand Burton's fascination with her. Sadly, their love story that was to begin like a meteor, would struggle to a sad and sloppy end. Taylor's utlimate tragedy, if we are to believe Bragg's account and that of other writers, is that she wouldn't or couldn't give up the ghost. Until his death, she was like Scarlett O'Hara thinking of new and different ways to get back her man.
Suzy Hunt the amazon, blond, model would be Burton's 3rd wife. He was unstinting in his praise of her, as she selflessly aided him as he was by the mid to late 1970's crippled with arthritis from years of hard living (rugby, drinking & a 5-pack a day cigarette habit). It can be noted that Suzy came along at just when he needed her, but being young (some 20 years his junior) would weary of her role as nursemaid and would leave Burton by the early 1980's. Like Sybil Burton, who has remained completely silent about her life with Richard, Suzy Hunt had done the same. She came and went, and other than an appearance at one of his memorial services, was not to enter his life again.
Perhaps Sally Hay Burton fairs best in this biography due to her generosity and openess to the author, but in my opinion, she has at last been granted her due, as Burton's last love. Burton's own notebooks speak glowingly of this incredibly competent, hardworking and independent woman, who unlike Taylor and Hunt never expected herself to be in a relationship with a world-famous actor of Mr. Burton's stature. I was struck at how much sadder his untimely death was in regards to Sally, since by his own account and hers, they were quite happy and Burton had a last found a modicum of peace in this relationship. The press was unfair to Sally during the time of Burton's death. She was blamed for his Welsh family not being in attendance at his funeral in Switzerland (it was Burton's choice to be interred in the Swiss village he lived had in for some 25 years) which was due to a misunderstanding caused by Burton's brother Graham Jenkins, who showed up in Switzerland with BBC reporter in tow. Sally herself now sees it was a mistake to exclude Taylor from the ceremony, but quite rightly she knew that the dignity of the service would be destroyed by the onslaught of press jockying to get pictures of Taylor's last goodbye to Burton. In fact, there were numerous memorials in Wales, New York & London at which the various wives and family would have a chance to pay their respects. Taylor in fact would sit squarely in the middle of the Welsh at the Memorial in London.
Scholarship was what Richard Burton most revered above all things. He was notorious for never watching movies and for never being without a book in hand. Althought he enjoyed the odd thriller, he was quite the intellectual in his tastes; he was a man of the classics; Poetry and Shakespearean verse could be recited forwards and literally backwards. He was a renowned conqueror of languages and was fluent in French, Italian, Spanish. and had a go at some of the non-romance languages as well (Serbo-Croat). It is quite conceivable that Burton would have made an excellent Oxford don, and even had a memorable 6 month go of it in the mid-seventies as a visiting instructor. He would never go on location without first stocking up on volumes of reading materials and one of his great gifts (from Suzy Hunt) was to have his books put into specially built library shelves at his Celigny home.
A lad's lad, a natural aristocrat, a spirited athlete on the pitch, a natural student, world renowned lover, one of the greatest actor's of the 20th century. A man who insisted on living life on his own terms and doing it in great style. Truly a rich life.
Fascinating, But a Bit Heavy Going.......2006-06-17
Let's be honest about this, Ok? Biography is history. Plain and simple. It may be handled subjectively or objectively, but at its roots it remains history.
Richard Burton: A Life covers the life and career of a staggeringly talented boozer, actor, womanizer, romantic genius who was one of the truly household names of his time. His liasion and ultimate marriages to and divorces from Elizabeth Taylor are inevitably a part of that life.
In this volume the co-conspiracy of E.T. (as she is frequently abbreviated) often becomes almost overwhelming -- and yet that may not be so inappropriate, for it was her influence and her obsessive love for him that motivate a great deal of his creative life. We have extensive extracts from his own (previously unpublished) notebooks, and those of his father and mentor Philip Burton who adopted him as a teenager.
But as many histories do, the book is so replete with detail that it has a tendency to plod. It is not a page turner. Rather it is a volume that one feels duty bound to finish mostly so that one may move on to one's next reading.
I have been in theatre myself for almost 60 years, so I have an affinity for things theatrical, yet this is not a theatrical volume. It is more of a literary National Enquirer with the feeling that the normal N.E. made up parts have been expunged.
Make no mistake about it, the book is well written in the sense that the prose is of good quality. However, unless you are a total unrequited flaming Richard fan for whom any written word is pure gospel, be forwarned -- you may find this a bit of work to read!
EXCELLENT INSIGHTS INTO A VERY COMPLEX MAN.......2004-05-17
I enjoyed this biography immensely, especially being as there
are generous quotes and insights from Burton's personal
journal and writings over a period of two decades and more.
Richard Burton was one of the most famous and remarkable
actors, celebrities, and 'genius's' of the past century.
He lived his life adventurously, ... even wrecklessly at
times. But he was never boring (as a man or as an actor)!
He was a 'one of a kind' person. Few people would disagree
with that accessment.
I highly recommend this book/biography. It is filled with
fascinating facts and insights on a man who remains on of
the most enigmatic and charismatic personality of our era.
A Troubled, Fascinating Man.......2004-01-29
There's a photo of Richard Burton in this book that's probably my own personal favorite: he's sitting on the back step of his house and completely absorbed in a book, oblivious to everything else around him.
He loved to read and there's also a photo of the inside of his house--and it looks like a library! (In fact, the only thing he ever asked for in his divorces were his books).
But what really makes this biography worth reading is that the author quotes Burton's own "notebooks," his diary that he kept over the years. You definitely get a deeper look into this celebrity as a person than most show business books provide.
He was certainly a conflicted man. Here was someone who was starring in the biggest movie ever made (CLEOPATRA), having an affair with the world's most glamorous actress (he'd buy Liz the Hope Diamond as one gift), living on a yatch off Monte Carlo, and yet he would grouse in his diary: "The French, American and Russian revolutions have meant nothing--the rich still get everything!" (I'm paraphrasing a bit).
I believe his own personal demons brought out his best performances: his HAMLET (available on DVD), BECKET (still not on DVD!), WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, EQUUS. There was such a despair in his eyes that it rarely looked like acting at all.
There always seemed to be something haunting him: his poor Welsh upbringing and alcoholic father, his abandonment of the "legitimate British stage" for the "Hollywood quick buck," his guilt over failed marriages. Unfortunately, he turned to drink too often to numb himself.
Richard Burton was a great actor. Even if some of the pain and rage was real.
Burton's diaries make this worth it.......2002-11-10
This is a well-researched and thoughtfully-written biography of a man who was perhaps the most famous man in the world in the decade of the 1960's. Now, sadly, Burton's legacy and fame have dimmed considerably and he's remembered more as Elizabeth Taylor's fifth (and sixth) husband. He was much more than that. I have always thought Burton overacted miserably in most of his roles and I was chiefly intrigued with him because of his beautiful physicality and because was an erudite, deeply intelligent man. He was also a prodigious reader and a keen intellect, but this genius seemed utterly wasted on Liz, a woman with whom he shared a passionate sex life, but precious little else.
The highlight of this book is the inclusion of over 100 pages of Burton's diaries, kept meticuously from 1965 until his death. Burton writes candidly, wittily and brilliantly. It's devilishly exciting to read his words about Liz and his vicious put downs of others, including a visceral tirade against poor Lucille Ball. He also muses on occasion about his autistic daughter, Jessica, who was hidden by the Burtons and kept in an institution all her life.
Burton had a larger-than-life appetite for living, sex, booze... you name it. He was self-destructive, manic-depressive and difficult, but all of those things make for a compelling character and this book illuminates him like no other.
Book Description
Published in 1851, this is the first book written by the famed Victorian explorer Richard F. Burton. It is an account of his journey through portions of southwest India while he was on sick leave from the British Indian army. Traveling through Bombay to the Portuguese colony of Goa, he went through Calicut and other cities on the Malabar coast, ending up in the Nilgiri mountains at the hill station of Ootacamund. The observant traveler, not the intrepid adventurer, is the narrator of the account, and its intended audience was the voracious Victorian consumer of travel literature.
Coupled with a critical introduction by Dane Kennedy, this facsimile edition provides a revealing look at the people who inhabited a part of India that was generally off the beaten track in the nineteenth century. The Portuguese and Mestizo inhabitants of Goa, the Todas of Ootacamund, as well as the fellow Britons Burton meets on his journey are all subject to his penetrating scrutiny. Burton's clever, ascerbic, and unorthodox personality together with his irreverence for convention and his bemused disdain for humanity come through clearly in these pages, as does his extraordinary command of the languages and literatures of various peoples.
"What a glad moment it is, to be sure, when the sick and seedy, the tired and testy invalid from pestiferous Scinde or pestilential Guzerat, 'leaves all behind him' and scrambles over the sides of his Pattimar."
"His what?"
"Ah! we forget. The gondola and barque are household words in your English ears, the budgerow is beginning to own an old familiar sound, but you are right--the 'Pattimar' requires a definition."
Customer Reviews:
Once you get past Burton's racism and intolerance.............2007-07-16
Richard Burton gave me a rare insight into the attitude of the British in India almost exactly 100 years before I was born in a small town about 10 miles from Ootacamund. It was very interesting to me to read a description of Burton's passage up to Ooty on horseback. The railroad and roads (with their 13 "hairpin bends") came later I suppose. That region of India is very dear to my heart and I carry many pleasant memories of my life in the Nilgiris.
If India were a pizza..............2003-12-17
Richard Burton, the famous, 19th century British traveller, started his career in India, but is mainly known for his works on Arabia and Africa. One of his earliest works, this book covers a period when he went on sick leave from his post in Sindh (now part of Pakistan) to the Nilgiri Hills in southern India. True to later form, Burton did not travel there by the usual route, but took a small coastal sailing ship down to Goa, stopped there for a look, then continued down to Malabar (part of India's Kerala state today), from where he travelled overland to Ootacamund, a "hill station" in the present state of Tamilnadu. The University of California Press reproduced his book with all its original spellings of Indian words, its early 19th century jokes and puns, and English words long since gone out of fashion. No doubt India fascinated Burton's inquiring mind and he looked into many subjects not ordinarily found in the genre of Indian travel writing produced between 1830 and 1930 by a myriad Englishmen and some English women as well. As someone who knows a bit about India, and particularly Goa, I would say he was not all that accurate. He did notice that Goan Christians remained Indian in most ways and that they were divided by caste like the Hindus, from whom they had been converted. However, his picture of the caste structure in Goa is not accurate, nor were his observations of Goan life anything more than those of a tourist. When Burton arrives in Malabar, he switches tone for some reason and supplies the reader with vast amounts of information culled from various reports or books, leaving almost no personal impressions. He reverts to his own observations as he climbs up towards Ootacamund.
I like travel books very much and long looked forward to reading this one. I was disappointed. It reminded me of a scene I once saw on an Australian TV comedy show. A chef pulls out a perfect pizza from an oven. You can see the cheese, the salami, the mushrooms, the beautiful crust. Mmm. The chef says, "And here's our pizza"--- and suddenly sneezing hugely right into it----"with a special mozzarella sauce !" Burton wrote what could have been a very interesting book, never mind accuracy. But his sneering, racist attitudes of contempt for everyone and everything, his total willingness to enforce his will on Indians with kicks and punches, his constant professions of boredom, and his scorn for each person he meets, even his own countrymen, cover the travel with a disgusting sauce, even though he may have been typical of his times. (and one should not condemn, blah, blah, blah) I must conclude that this book is not for everyone, only for the truly determined or for those who wish to research the author. For that latter purpose, the book is no doubt revealing.
In Goa, History Speaks to Burton.......2002-02-01
What could be better than Victorian travel literature by Richard F. Burton. Not much. Burton is no slouch when it comes to travel, he takes the hard routes across his continents not the comfy ones that his fellows take and so he sees more and is better able to put the "normal" English experience of India into a wider context. Burton is never given the tasks or assignments he had hoped to get so he sets himself the task, out of mere boredom perhaps, of categorically describing India, its geography, ethnography, religions. He describes India in all manner of ways of describing a place including history of its cities and Goa's history is quite ripe with meaning for Burton as it tells the story of why the Portugese empire fell..., a tale which Burton feels has a lesson for the English. That he was an expert linguist helps and that he had an appetite, insatiable apparently, for all kinds of experience makes his book a kind of interdisciplinary collection of datas, some more significant than others but the effect is that he experienced a place in every way imaginable. He was romantic in that he was not suited to live within anyones boundaries but his own(he was expelled from Oxford), and scholarly, but his was a kind of scholarship that tested existing knowledge of India in the field. Perhaps a growing disillusion with England & what it really was to be English made him particularly susceptible to other knowledges and ways of being. He learned an immense amount about the lives of various natives by blending in and acting as one of them but he did this much as a spy does this, as a means of gaining information, not as an end in itself. He was perfectly suited to be a spy. Properly used someone like Burton would have been an invaluable source of information as to what actual Indians thought. If there were more like him the empire would have better understood the country it was ruling over and so more effectively ruled it, however, most Englishman felt it best to erect and enforce an invisible boundary between himself and the cultures of India. And Burton, who often dressed according to local custom even in his English quarters, was not popular among his peers nor was his information ever taken very seriously. His commanding officers simply were unable to see the value in his ability to play so many roles and so were unable to give him a role worthy of him to play. Among his narrow minded fellow officers he became his own man, a self-styled cultural anthropologist with a minor disciplinary interest in ethnographic mimicry who filled volumes with his very rare and particular talents for cross-cultural interaction and observation.
Like many travel narratives the highlights are in the little details(uncomfortable transports, unfriendly hosts) and side stories. No detail is ever lost on Burton and in matters of stories what counts most is the personality of their teller. There is none better than Burton.
Book Description
Thinking quantitatively about physiology is difficult for many students. However, it is fundamentally important for students to gain a proper understanding of many of the concepts involved. In this enlarged second edition of his popular textbook, Richard Burton gives the reader an opportunity to develop a feel for values such as ion concentrations, lung and fluid volumes, and blood pressures through the use of calculations requiring little more than simple arithmetic. The book provides guidance on how to avoid errors and the usefulness of approximation and "back-of-envelope sums." The topics discussed here include energy metabolism, nerve and muscle, blood and the cardiovascular system, respiration, renal function, body fluids, and acid-base balance. This book is essential reading for physiology students (and teachers) everywhere, both those who are shy or adept with numbers.
Book Description
Asie Taylor is a half-blood Indian raised by Mormons, a gifted musician and a sharp-tongued philosopher; Sun Moon is a Tibetan nun who has been kidnapped and sold into prostitution in California. Each is on the run--Asie toward his heritage and the secret of his "Rock Child" name, Sun Moon from her captors, in particular the fanatical "Destroying Angel" of Mormondon, Porter Rockwell.
The fate of these two innocents takes its strangest turn when they are thrown together with a man innocent of nothing, the scar-faced Nile explorer Sir Richard Burton who in 1862 is making his leisurely way across the American West.
The journey of this remarkable trio, their footsteps dogged by the relentless Rockwell, ranges from Brigham Young's Salt Lake City through the mining camps of the Comstock Lode in Nevada (where a reporter named Sam Clemens befriends them) is a dazzling tour-de-force adventure.
Customer Reviews:
"Flabbergaster".......2002-10-22
I found this novel a delightful and interesting read. The inclusion of Buddhist spirituality, an amazingly international array of characters (even a Chinese Muslim (Uighur) tavernkeeper), and emphasis on the Native American experience, make this novel deeper and more meaningful than most other novels set in the American West. Though the plot is intriguing, the novel is at its best in depicting its colorful and diverse characters (Taylor, buoyant half-Indian, with a passion for music, who pairs up with Sun moon, beautiful Tibetan nun)and settings, from a Digger Indian village to Mormon Utah. Despite its realistic depictions of the racism and violence of the period, the story remains light-hearted and humorous. Sir Richard Burton, Nile explorer and drug addict, was particularly enjoyable. It would have been more interesting if his Sufi beliefs were explored a bit further, but of course he was somewhat of a side character.
This book "rocks" !.......2002-02-10
Everything about this book kis great. Awesome and *original* story line, interesting historical facts, and wild adventure. This is the first book I've ever read by Blevins, and now I can't wait to order his other books, pronto. If you like historically based novels and unique :-) story lines, this is the book for you.
Rock Child.......2000-05-21
This book is a first person account of a perilous journey taken across the wild west. What makes this book unique is the company the teller keeps. A half breed of unknown origins is the teller, and he is in the company of a Tibetan nun whom he has fallen in love with, and a spy for the British--who's secretly practicing a 'heathen' religion! If you like westerns...try this one! It's a western with a twist!
Average customer rating:
- Kept me interested
- Don't let my rating fool you
- Delicious reading
- Ohboy, more dirt on Richard Burton
- BEAUTIFUL WRITING!
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The Secret Life of a Schoolgirl
Rosemary Kingsland
Manufacturer: Crown
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 140004782X
Release Date: 2003-07-08 |
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The Secret Life of a Schoolgirl is an extraordinary memoir—a jewel. Rosemary Kingsland was born in India during the dying days of the British Raj. While there, she and her family lived a life of privilege. But with the fall of the Raj, they were forced to return to England, where their fortunes took a decided turn for the worse. In London, then in Cornwall, then back in London, the simmering tension between Rosemary’s parents erupted into outright warfare fueled by alcohol and her father’s persistent, unrepentant womanizing. It was a lonely, dangerous childhood.
But one day Rosemary’s life changed forever. At a café where she had gone to escape from a party her father had insisted she attend with him, she met Richard Burton, the dashingly handsome Welsh actor who was then the toast of the London stage. She had seen him in Under Milkwood some months before. She was an adolescent schoolgirl. He was twenty-nine.
The Secret Life of a Schoolgirl is a deeply felt evocation of first love, and of family bonds forged in intense isolation. It is made all the more remarkable by the luminous quality and riveting narrative voice of Rosemary Kingsland.
Customer Reviews:
Kept me interested.......2007-08-29
This memoir kept me interested the whole time I was reading (and when I was not reading it)
Don't let my rating fool you.......2005-09-26
I liked this book but I seem to be the only person stunned by the fact that one of this century's greatest actors practiced statutory rape again and again and apparently with little or no remorse. I will never again enjoy any movie with Richard Burton. The book is a sad yet compelling read. I can't be angry or vindictive towards a child of 14 but as she got older, she should have realized what a creep and child molester Richard Burton was. I am glad she is successful now and can only pray she learned how NOT to live her life having written a book like this. Thank God women can work outside the home and have careers, attend higher college and pursue lives without depending on any man. This is a good, but sad sad book. I was very depressed by it.
Delicious reading.......2004-06-05
This book made a big splash when it was published, there were oodles of headlines screaming, "Richard Burton was a pedophile!" Ah hem... not quite. The only portions worth reading here are the Burton ones, the rest of the tome is one rather large snooze fest. Kingsland lived a teenage life to die for: as a 14 year old school girl in London, she meets Richard Burton, then 29 and starring in various Shakespearean productions at the Old Vic. Not surprisingly, she was instantly attracted to Burton (what female between the ages of 9 and 90 wouldn't be?), and told him she was 17.
Then their affair began. It was long afterwards that Kingsland admitted to Richard that she was actually only 14 years of age, but Burton didn't seem to care, and continued making love to the girl for several more months. He finally dumps her, as he dumped all his mistresses of that era: Jean Simmons, Claire Bloom and Susan Strasberg, to name a few of his thousands of conquests. Kingsland writes well and her chapters on Burton are engrossing, to say the least. Richard comes off as a drunken but charming cad, and his lovemaking prowess seems to have been rather limited: a slam, bam, thank you, ma'am sort of guy. But when you look like that, who is going to complain? There are some problems with dates, the author puts Burton in London when he wasn't there, and he was certainly not playing Hamlet at the Vic in 1954!
I can think of worse things than to be deflowered by Richard Burton, even if he should have done the proper thing and waited until this girl was out of school. If you're into Burton, this will do you nicely.
Ohboy, more dirt on Richard Burton.......2004-04-17
This delightfully lusty memoir's core bit of cheap gossip is a secret she's kept for more than 40 years: she lost her virginity to Richard Burton. After a rather shaky beginning, Kingsland settles down to a slower pace, pulling readers into a lush background tale of her parents' life in India during the era of the Raj. When Partition forced them back to England, her father was devastated by the change in their circumstances and comforted himself with women and writing poetry. Her mother became agoraphobic in defense - until their fortunes were changed by their improbably huge winnings in a football pool, which allowed them to move from the provincial Cornwall into London.
The episodes surrounding her relationship with Burton, when he was a stage star and she was a star-struck, infatuated 14yo schoolgirl, are written with insight that can only be gained by the passage of all the intervening years.
Charming and evocative coming-of-age memoir.
BEAUTIFUL WRITING!.......2003-08-14
Don't be fooled by the slightly salacious title--this is a gorgeous memoir that's sexy without being trashy. Rosemary Kingsland tells a truly unique coming-of-age story: raised in the English Raj, she and her family move back to England from India when the Empire falls, only to live in poverty, first in the misty wilds of Cornwall (the descriptions in this part are among the most enchanting of the book) and then in grimy post-war London. Her family is like something out of "Long Day's Journey Into Night", full of frustration, alcoholism and violence, but she renders them fully human and sympathetic. Of course, the most shocking part of the book is about her affair, at age 14, with Richard Burton. An inveterate womanizer, Burton manages to seduce young Rosemary while simultaneously carrying on other affairs. The story of their relationship is surprising, but the author appears to have no bitterness or anger towards Burton, and he comes across as surprisingly sad, despite his dashing ways and handsome looks.
Overall, this is a rare literary memoir that is also compulsively readable and provocative. I highly recommend it.
Books:
- The Dream Palaces of Hollywood's Golden Age
- The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book Two: Ghost Roads (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Gatekeeper Trilogy)
- The Hollywood Standard: The Complete and Authoritative Guide to Script Format and Style
- The Major Film Theories: An Introduction (Galaxy Book ; Gb450)
- The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography (Oprah's Book Club)
- The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography (Oprah's Book Club)
- The Merchant of Marvels and the Peddler of Dreams
- The Phantom of the Opera - piano vocal Selections
- The Power of Face Reading (2nd Edition)
- The Prince Kidnaps a Bride (Lost Princesses, Book 3)
Books Index
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