Bangkok Author:Alec Waugh Fanny knox, nineteen years old, the daughter of the British consul to Siam. In 1875, she fell in love with a Thai nobleman, but unfortunately ran afoul of the chief minister of Siam, who wanted her to marry his own grandson, Nai Dee. Fanny eloped with the nobleman -- and began a chain of scandals, royal intrigues and international incidents that... more » lasted for years.
Ananda, Lord of Life, twenty years old. One morning he was found dead in his room, a revolver by his hand and a bullet through his head. The investigation unmistakably showed suicide, but that a king should take his own life was absolutely unthinkable. So three men were executed for murder.
Mongkut, "one of the greatest kings in the history of mankind," possessed of thirty-five wives and eighty-two children. In the nineteenth century, he led Bangkok from the status of a medieval backwater into modern times, and became the subject of a famous and highly erroneous novel called "Anna and the King of Siam," later "The King and I." He once offered Abraham Lincolm the use of a contigent of elephants for battle power in the American Civil War. Mr. Lincoln politely declined.
These are just a few of the people and events in BANGKOK, the graceful, witty, and dramatic biography of one of the most fabulous cities in the world by peripatetic novelist and essayist Alec Waugh.« less