Cookies on the BBC website
How A Couple Sacrificed Every Escape to the African wilds in this hilarious, true-life adventure. Beautifully written, rich characters and a dollop of edge-of-the-seat suspense. A delightful, honest book about growing up in a farm family with 12 siblings and the life-changing effects of a college basketball scholarship. Selected and Edited by M How did Napoleon become one of the greastest generals in history? His original thoughts on leadership and the art of war.
About the Author Fawn M. Related Video Shorts 0 Upload your video. A Life From Beginning to End. Do you want to learn about George Stephenson? But don't have the time or patience for a page book? You don't want to miss this! The Life of Thomas Jefferson Illustrated. This book profiles one of America's most prominent founders, from his aristocratic origins to his ideology and his profound legacy on the country. The Legends of Mount Rushmore: This book covers the lives, careers, and legacies of each president immortalized on Mount Rushmore, and how they've affected America ever since.
Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. Read reviews that mention richard burton sir richard fawn brodie devil drives years ago kama sutra source of the nile well written joseph smith book is well worth reading read it years burton to life read this book biography british fascinating men subject biographer. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. I had read two other bios, and although I never tire of a good Burton biography, this was perhaps the best. His early days in Sind are well recounted, he views on love, sex in the subcontinent, and his famous days in Mecca and African adventures are well told here The two men had shared immesurable pain and hardship, they relied upon each other to stay alive In the end, the argument of the true source of the Nile may have just been the rift that separated two personalities that were already very far apart in temperment and opinion and stood no chance to get back together.
The book details more about the early life of Burton on the continent, the fact that he never considered himself British and functioned best when outside of British public life. Viewed as little better than a vagabond Burton functioned around the edges of British society, never staying very long in England and usually hating it when he had to and then being only regarded enough to obtain minor British Legation positions around the fringes of the world - his time spent as British Commissioner in Fernando Po in Equitorial Guinea after he had published a slough of books was only one case in point.
His prediliction with the overly exotic read sex , made him a hightly inconvenient person among upper-class circles.
- Taken.
- Ikons: Saint Nicholas the Wonder Worker;
- Sir Richard Burton.
- Escorting 101: A Beginners Guide to Building a Business.
- Life of Sir Richard Francis Burton.
- The life of Sir Richard Burton?
- The Dirty Dozen: 12 Mistakes to Avoid in Your New York Accident Case.
I did not know that Brodie was the master of the psychological interpretation of historical personalities before reading this book. I think that more or less insulated me from this interpretation which, though strong, does not at all overwhelm the book. A Life of Sir Richard Burton was a fascinating biography of an extraordinary man. I read the book originally many years ago, but through various moves, I lost my copy, but. I got it again from Amazon, and I read it on vacation to. HI, it's worth reading a second time.
One person found this helpful 2 people found this helpful.
Richard Francis Burton
Lawrence, Wilfred Thesiger, a long tradition of great men exploring foreign languages and themselves. Almost on a par with John Mack's definitive work on Lawrence of Arabia.
This in-depth look at Richard Burton will likely lead you to well over a dozen wonderful books. I did not realize that Burton had turned down General Gordon's offer of the position of governor of the Sudan.
- Graveminder.
- DESERT QUEEN; LADY HESTER STANHOPE (SCANDALOUS WOMEN Book 1)?
- Sir Richard Burton (1821 - 1890).
- Catch the Light: While you have the light.
- Wreck of the Huron (A Mike Scott Thriller Book 4)?
- BBC - History - Sir Richard Burton;
- From October to Brest-Litovsk.
- Awakening to Prayer: A Womans Perspective (Called to Holiness).
The position eventually went to Rudolph Slatin author of Fire and Sword in the Sudan , who ended up spending 13 years as prisoner of the Mahdi. There must be a few men of this caliber out there today, but I don't have a clue who they are and what they are up to. 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. In , taking leave from the company, he undertook a 'Hajj' or pilgrimage to Mecca, in disguise, and his account of this trip made him famous. The following year he explored what is now Somalia with a number of other officers, including John Speke.
In , Burton and Speke embarked on a Royal Geographical Society funded expedition to explore inland from the east African coast, with the hope of finding the source of the Nile. It was a difficult trip. When they arrived at Lake Tanganyika, Speke was almost blind and Burton could hardly walk. Speke travelled on alone and discovered Lake Victoria, which he was convinced was the Nile's source. Burton disagreed and this contributed to a long and bitter public quarrel between the two men which ended in September when Speke died in a shooting which was either suicide or an accident.
Burton now joined the Foreign Office, and was appointed consul in Fernando Po, an island off the coast of West Africa. His wife Isabel, who he had married in , was unable to join him as the climate was considered too unhealthy. Though the effort failed, Burton realized his reputation was irreparably clouded and returned, ill and disconsolate, to England.
From his 29th to his 32nd year he lived with his mother and sister in Boulogne , France, where he wrote four books on India, including Sindh, and the Races That Inhabit the Valley of the Indus , a brilliant ethnological study, published before the new science of ethnology had a proper tradition against which its merits could be evaluated. Meanwhile he perfected his long-cherished plans for going to Mecca. His Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Mecca —56 was not only a great adventure narrative but also a classic commentary on Muslim life and manners, especially on the annual pilgrimage.
Instead of returning to London to enjoy his sudden fame, however, he organized a new expedition in to the equally forbidden East African city of Harar Harer and became the first European to enter this Muslim citadel without being executed.
The Life of Sir Richard Burton: Thomas Wright: tandjfoods.com: Books
He described his adventures in First Footsteps in East Africa By this time Burton had become fascinated by the idea of discovering the source of the White Nile and in planned an expedition with three officers of the British East India Company , including John Hanning Speke , intending to push across Somaliland. Africans attacked the party near Berbera , however, killing one member of the party and seriously wounding Speke. Burton himself had a javelin hurled through his jaw and was forced to return to England.
After recovery, in July , he went to Crimea to volunteer in the war against Russia. At the Dardanelles he helped train Turkish irregulars but saw no action at the front. The Crimean War over, he turned again to the Nile search, leading an expedition inland from Zanzibar with John Speke in — They suffered almost every kind of hardship Africa could inflict. When they finally arrived on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, Burton was so ill from malaria he could not walk, and Speke was virtually blind. Ailing, and disappointed by native information that the Rusizi River to the north poured into rather than out of the lake, Burton wished to return and prepare a new expedition.
Speke, however, who had recovered more quickly, pushed on alone to the northeast and discovered Lake Victoria , which he was convinced was the true Nile source. Speke was the first to return to London, where he was lionized and given funds to return to Africa.
Burton, largely ignored and denied financing for a new exploration of his own, felt betrayed. The resulting volume, City of the Saints , showed that he could write with sophistication about the nature of the Mormon church , compose a vivid portrait of its leader, Brigham Young , and also be dispassionate about the Mormon practice of polygamy, which was then outraging most Americans. Shortly after his return from the United States, in January , he and Isabel Arundell, the daughter of an aristocratic family, whom he had been courting since , were married secretly.
During his three years there, he made many short trips of exploration into West Africa, gathering enough material to fill five books. His explicit descriptions of tribal rituals concerning birth, marriage, and death, as well as fetishism, ritual murder, cannibalism, and bizarre sexual practices, though admired by modern anthropologists, won him no favour with the Foreign Office, which considered him eccentric if not dangerous. Speke, who with the British soldier and explorer James Augustus Grant had made a memorable journey from Zanzibar to Lake Victoria and then down the whole length of the Nile, was expected to defend his conviction that Lake Victoria was the true Nile source.
After the preliminary session on September 15, Speke went hunting, dying mysteriously as a result of a shotgun wound in his chest. Burton spent the next four years as consul in Santos, Braz. Yet his work did not help him to overcome his increasing aversion for Brazil. He took to drink, and finally he sent his devoted wife to London to obtain a better post for him. She succeeded in persuading the Foreign Secretary to appoint Burton consul in Damascus.