Imperial Vanities : The Adventures of the Baker Brothers and Gordon of Khartoum

This is the entwined story of three Victorians. Two of these men were brothers - Sir Samuel Baker, the irrepressible explorer; and Valentine Baker, reckoned to be the leading cavalry officer of the British Army before disgrace overwhelmed him. The third is the troubled Charles "Chinese" Gordon, murdered by the Mahdi's forces in Khartoum. "Imperial Vanities" is an adventure story in the high tradition, ranging from the Upper Nile, to Ceylon, Egypt and the slave markets of the Balkans. In his second book on Victorian life, Brian Thompson recounts the beginnings of the end of British Empire through the story of three men - the explorer Samuel Baker, whose second wife was a slave; his brother Valentine, who indecently assaulted a girl on a train and their friend Gordon of Khartoum, who preferred the company of men and the Bible. "Imperial Vanities is the entwined story of three Victorians. Two of these men were brothers - Sir Samuel Baker, the irrepressible adventurer and explorer, and Colonel Valentine Baker, reckoned by his age to be the leading cavalry officer of the British Army before disgrace and humiliation overwhelmed him. The third is the enigmatic and troubled Charles 'Chinese' Gordon, murdered by the Mahdi's forces in Khartoum in 1885." "The lives of these three men were bent and twisted by the nineteenth-century conviction that an Englishman was at the summit of God's creation, to whom was given the task of changing the entire world. The outcome of such a belief was to turn a collection of forts and anchorages, factories and trading posts into the quasi-mystical Big Idea we have forgotten today - the British Empire as creator and destroyer." "Imperial Vanities is an adventure story in the high tradition, ranging from the upper Nile to Ceylon, Egypt and the slave markets of the Balkans. Wilful, profoundly eccentric and driven by the sort of idealism we no longer consider an heroic virtue, the lives of these men combine to make a tragi-comic commentary on the most widely-held conviction of their times: that God himself was an Englishman. 'Better a ball in the brain than to flicker out unheeded', Gordon wrote in his journal. Written with Thompson's masterly touch, this is history at its best."--Jacket A true story of empire set in the Crimea, Sudan, Ceylon and Egypt – beautifully written and shot through with real psychological and historical insight. 'Victorian Britain, that seemingly most conformist of ages, was in fact teeming with eccentrics. The fabulous Baker Brothers were eccentric in a conformist way for the time: Sir Samuel searched for the source of the Nile; Baker Pasha became leader of the Ottoman army. But it was that epitome of empire, and epitome of the Christian English gentleman, who was the most peculiar of them all: 'Chinese' Gordon is finally depicted as the anarchist he really was as he marched to his death against the Mahdi. It is Thompson's triumph that he gives these characters, straitjacketed first by their time, and then by history, the freedom to dance across the page once more.' JUDITH FLANDERS Imperial Vanities is an adventure story in the high tradition, ranging from the Upper Nile, to Ceylon, Egypt and the slave markets of the Balkans. Livingstone, Speke and Burton also make an appearance, with the shadowy and elusive Laurence Oliphant spying from the sidelines. Written with Thompson's masterly touch, this is history at its best. 'A tale of Empire at its most eccentric. Part biography, part history, part adventure yarn, Imperial Vanities is an ingeniously enjoyable read.' Fergus Fleming "Imperial Vanities is an adventure story in the high tradition, ranging from the upper Nile to Ceylon, Egypt and the slave markets of the Balkans. Wilful, profoundly eccentric and driven by the sort of idealism we no longer consider an heroic virtue, the lives of these men combine to make a tragi-comic commentary on the most widely-held conviction of their times: that God himself was an Englishman. 'Better a ball in the brain than to flicker out unheeded', Gordon wrote in his journal. Written with Thompson's masterly touch, this is history at its best."--BOOK JACKET. ‘A Victorian drama of three intertwined lives set against a backcloth of the greatest empire the world has ever seen. By degrees heroic, poignant, whimsical and tragic, Brian Thompson’s wonderful book is precisely what that much-misused cliché “rattling good yarn” might have been coined to describe.’ RICHARD HOLMES 'A Victorian drama of three intertwined lives set against a backcloth of the greatest empire the world has ever seen. By degrees heroic, poignant, whimsical and tragic, Brian Thompson's wonderful book is precisely what that much-misused cliche "rattling good yarn" might have been coined to describe.' RICHARD HOLMES This title recounts the beginnings of the end of the British Empire through three men - the explorer Samuel Baker, whose second wife was a slave; his brother Valentine, who indecently assaulted a girl on a train and their friend Gordon of Khartoum, who preferred the company of men and the Bible. Brian Thompson. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 257-259) And Index.