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The Duke of Puddle Dock: Travels in the Footsteps of Stamford Raffles
The author of The Innocent Anthropologist retraces the steps of the founder of Singapore, from Malacca to Java to Bali to Singapore, discussing Raffles's life and describing the characters he meets along the way. 25,000 first printing.
276 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1992
13 people are currently reading
62 people want to read
About the author
Nigel Barley
42 books103 followersBorn 1947. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Ba...
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 25, 2019
If you’re looking for a biography of a Stamford Raffles... this isn’t it. This is the story of Nigel Barley going to places in modern Southeast Asia that Raffles visited.
While it is an interesting idea, the book can’t ever really decide what it is. Am I following Barley, with his astonishing and almost unbelievable conversations with locals, and Raffles? Am I learning about the cities? Is it history? Travelogue? Fiction? It tries to be all these things and so never really becomes any.
That said, there are places he visits that won’t be in your lonely planet guides, and they are interesting. It is also interesting to see how these places have changed in almost 200 years.
If you have an interest in the places and life of Raffles you’ll enjoy it. If you’re not, it isn’t engaging enough to hold a casual reader.
While it is an interesting idea, the book can’t ever really decide what it is. Am I following Barley, with his astonishing and almost unbelievable conversations with locals, and Raffles? Am I learning about the cities? Is it history? Travelogue? Fiction? It tries to be all these things and so never really becomes any.
That said, there are places he visits that won’t be in your lonely planet guides, and they are interesting. It is also interesting to see how these places have changed in almost 200 years.
If you have an interest in the places and life of Raffles you’ll enjoy it. If you’re not, it isn’t engaging enough to hold a casual reader.
April 9, 2019
A rather different take on a travelogue as this is more of a biologue.
Following in the footsteps of Sir Stamford Raffles, the author mixes modern travel with historical biography in a relaxed blend of observational commentary, which allows reflection on how the ideals of yesteryear are realized in today's world.
Amusing and entertaining, this is a great - if slightly off-beat - read, which manages to convey the sense of modern travel with history really well.
Highly enjoyable.
Following in the footsteps of Sir Stamford Raffles, the author mixes modern travel with historical biography in a relaxed blend of observational commentary, which allows reflection on how the ideals of yesteryear are realized in today's world.
Amusing and entertaining, this is a great - if slightly off-beat - read, which manages to convey the sense of modern travel with history really well.
Highly enjoyable.
July 10, 2018
'Selected at an early age to conduct the government of the British conquests in the Indian Ocean, by wisdom, vigour and philanthropy, he raised Java to happiness and prosperity unknown under former rules. After the surrender of that island to the Dutch and during his government in Sumatra, he founded an emporium at Singapore.'
"Thus intones the inscription to the statue of Stamford Raffles that stands in Westminster Abbey. Raffles as man of the empire, reforming colonialist and prodigal adventurer. Yet his brief, brilliant career (he died in his forties) ended in virtual penury amid endless squabbles about money with his former employer, the East India Company. What happened? Who was this complex character who had risen to eminence from the back streets of London, where his aunt, in a joking comment on his first efforts at gentility had nicknamed him 'the Duke of Puddle Dock'?"
~~back cover
I must learn to be more mindful of the blurbs about books before I bung them on my wishlist. I thought this was a book about travel; instead it's a book about "Travels in the Footsteps of Stamford Raffles". The author, Nigel Barley, is one of my favorite authors -- I hardily recommend The Innocent Anthropologist: Notes from a Mud Hut or A Plague of Caterpillars for a laugh-out-loud romp through anthropology in Africa.
So I read more, hoping the book would spring to life for me (books sometimes do, you know, if you keep on.) But it didn't. I got to page 110 (out of 267; 41%) and realized I just wasn't enjoying it. And when you've got at 700 other books waiting to be read, why keep on slogging through a book that holds no interest, either in the subject matter or in the writing itself?
So I stopped. With apologies to Mr. Barley, and Raffles himself.
"Thus intones the inscription to the statue of Stamford Raffles that stands in Westminster Abbey. Raffles as man of the empire, reforming colonialist and prodigal adventurer. Yet his brief, brilliant career (he died in his forties) ended in virtual penury amid endless squabbles about money with his former employer, the East India Company. What happened? Who was this complex character who had risen to eminence from the back streets of London, where his aunt, in a joking comment on his first efforts at gentility had nicknamed him 'the Duke of Puddle Dock'?"
~~back cover
I must learn to be more mindful of the blurbs about books before I bung them on my wishlist. I thought this was a book about travel; instead it's a book about "Travels in the Footsteps of Stamford Raffles". The author, Nigel Barley, is one of my favorite authors -- I hardily recommend The Innocent Anthropologist: Notes from a Mud Hut or A Plague of Caterpillars for a laugh-out-loud romp through anthropology in Africa.
So I read more, hoping the book would spring to life for me (books sometimes do, you know, if you keep on.) But it didn't. I got to page 110 (out of 267; 41%) and realized I just wasn't enjoying it. And when you've got at 700 other books waiting to be read, why keep on slogging through a book that holds no interest, either in the subject matter or in the writing itself?
So I stopped. With apologies to Mr. Barley, and Raffles himself.
November 26, 2015
The book wasn't what I was expecting, but that was really my own fault. I was hoping for a pure history of Sir Stamford Raffles, but this is a travelogue, where the author follows in the footsteps of Raffles by visiting the places in South East Asia that were significant to him. There are snapshots of Raffles here, but it's more about the author's travels than about Raffles himself.
One thing that didn't sit right with me is the supposed conversations the author had with various people. I have to be honest, few of them have a ring of truth about them. Most just don't really sound like actual conversations; they have a feel of them being perhaps combinations of various conversations, or worse, just outright inventions. I could be doing the author a disservice, but they really don't sound like genuine conversations, and that harms the whole feel of the book. The author is a talented writer, though, but I feel his talents might lie with fiction better than history.
Another problem I have has nothing to do with the author. This publication, by Monsoon Books, is woeful. It is absolutely littered with publication errors. I'm amazed that this actually made it into print.
Whether I recommend this book depends on what you want out of it. If you're looking for a biography of Sir Stamford Raffles then this isn't really it. If you enjoy reading travelogues then you might enjoy this.
One thing that didn't sit right with me is the supposed conversations the author had with various people. I have to be honest, few of them have a ring of truth about them. Most just don't really sound like actual conversations; they have a feel of them being perhaps combinations of various conversations, or worse, just outright inventions. I could be doing the author a disservice, but they really don't sound like genuine conversations, and that harms the whole feel of the book. The author is a talented writer, though, but I feel his talents might lie with fiction better than history.
Another problem I have has nothing to do with the author. This publication, by Monsoon Books, is woeful. It is absolutely littered with publication errors. I'm amazed that this actually made it into print.
Whether I recommend this book depends on what you want out of it. If you're looking for a biography of Sir Stamford Raffles then this isn't really it. If you enjoy reading travelogues then you might enjoy this.
December 29, 2012
While generally an engaging read, Barley tends to the rather incredible hyperbole of chance encounters and scarcely believable conversations with the locals. In such a travelogue, artistic license is freely given, but it'd help if Barley distinguishes the real from the imagined, the verbatim versus the vicissitudinal. While he's made a creditable effort to helpfully put us in Raffles' shoes, you can't help but wonder how much is apocryphal and embellished.
October 25, 2014
Well written account of Stamford Raffles life. It alternated between narration as he, the author Nigel Barley, traveled to where Raffles went and accounts others wrote of him and even passages Raffles wrote himself. Barley keeps things light with his amusing way of describing some events.
May 21, 2015
4.5. I love his enthusiasm in retracing Raffles' footsteps, especially in places I've known so well because I also have the same feeling. But is it really necessary to compare Raffles with Soekarno?
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews