Penny Junor

#2

1963

Full-blooded biography, published in England in 1963 but only now making its US debut, of England's most notorious explorer; by the author of Eminent Victorian Soldiers (1985) and The Great War in Africa, 1914-1918 (1986). Ruffian Dick--one of the kinder sobriquets thrown Burton's way--was an ace linguist, translator, ethnographer, pornographer, and all-around troublemaker, as well as the discoverer of Lake Tanganyika and the first Englishman to penetrate Mecca. A man of great courage and initiative, he was also sometimes cruel and pigheaded. Somehow Farwell steers an objective course through the treacherous shoals of Burton's erratic life, avoiding the psychoanalyzing of Fawn Brodie and other recent biographers in favor of an exuberant, fair-minded study. It's all here: Burton's wild childhood (fist-fights and brothels), expulsion from Oxford, years in India as a soldier and Sufi, African and Middle Eastern explorations, roller-coaster literary career, bitter feuds, peculiar marriage to the romantic, devoutly Catholic Isabel--the entire glorious package. Farwell's at his best dishing out Burton's more bizarre opinions and actions--his love of nose rings on women, his advocacy of flaying alive as punishment, his fascination with male brothels. He also does a good job of dissecting Burton's literary style, which wavers from brilliant observation to such clunky euphemisms as ""quadruped creation"" in lieu of ""horse."" ""A misfit in any age"" and ""one of the rarest personalities ever seen on earth""--just two of the many exotic labels Farwell slaps on his subject. Happily, he makes them stick. Mesmerizing.

#3

His childhood was a recipe for disaster, yet as he approaches his thirtieth birthday, William is as well-balanced and sane a man as you could hope to meet. He has an utter determination to do the right thing and to serve his country as his grandmother has so successfully done for the last sixty years. The question is how? Who stopped him going off the rails and turning his back on his duty? Where did the qualities that have so entranced the world come from?--Cover. Prince William has emerged as the people's prince. He has surfaced from a lifetime of scrutiny and speculation as a discerning and charming young man, determined to serve the nation he loves. His wedding to long-term sweetheart Kate Middleton last year was watched by over two billion people around the world.