The Duke of Puddledock: Travels in the Footsteps of Stamford Raffles [Illustrated] [Hardcover]

Nigel Barley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 26, 1992

In part, this is a biography of Stamford Raffles. The author travels, literally and imaginatively, through the lands that Raffles knew. It is also the experiences of a contemporary traveller as his journey takes him to Malacca, Java, Bali and Singapore.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this enchanting pastiche of history, biography and travelogue, the British Museum's assistant keeper and director of the Museum of Mankind resurrects the "real" Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781-1826), founder and British governor of Singapore. Following in Raffles's footsteps, Barley plays the known facts about his life against the contradictory local myths and gossip about him in a witty portrait of a man now known primarily by the name of the famous Raffles Hotel in Singapore. Born poor, Raffles was dubbed "the Duke" by an aunt for his elegant airs. From a menial job at the East India Company, he rose to a position that enabled him to help take Java from the cruel rule of the Dutch to the more (controversially) beneficent one of the British. The book is also an entertaining visit with the intrepid author and a host of high and low characters Barley drew into his adventure.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

Admirers of Barley's witty and revealing anthropological- adventure yarns (Not a Hazardous Sport, 1989, etc.) will be pleased to see that the assistant curator of the British Museum has not lost his touch as he recounts his experiences at sites associated with Sir Stamford Raffles (1781-1826)--founder of Singapore and general burr under the saddle of the high-riding directors of the British East India Company during the early 19th century. Puzzled by conflicting reports on the enigmatic Englishman's life, Barley set off to track Raffles's exploits across the East Asian landscape, through Java, Bali, Singapore, and, finally, back to England, where Raffles died at age 44. The scene shifts back and forth between the Georgian statesman's public successes (governor of Java, knighthood) and private sorrows (the early death of his first wife and three of his four children), and Barley's own befuddlements and brouhahas. Along the way, the author draws unexpected parallels between Raffles's views and those of Indonesia's toppled left-leaning dictator, Sukarno. Barley's own views are delightfully iconoclastic: ``All anthropologists and writers bring a deadly infection, for to make a place known is to contribute to the destruction of what makes it interesting.'' And his eye is always on the alert for the peripheral action, as when he notes a drum majorette's dented baton ``that spoke of the need for further practice.'' Despite Barley's yeomanly efforts, many of Raffles's motivations and even some of his actions remain obscure here. It's the author's own rambunctious exploits that carry the day--and that's more than enough. (Sixteen pages of b&w illustrations, map- -not seen.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Viking; illustrated edition edition (March 26, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670836427
• ISBN-13: 978-0670836420
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,496,713 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Raffles and The East, June 1, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Duke of Puddledock: Travels in the Footsteps of Stamford Raffles (Hardcover)

In this modern day journey in the footseteps of Stamford Raffles, Britain's premier imperialist in southeast Asia, Nigel Barley injects his customary humor into both history and travelogue. Barley's hilarious books on anthropology are recalled in his wry humorous history of Raffles (founder of Singapore and namesake of the still-standing hotel there that served as the principal watering hole of England's expats) and even more humorous record of Barley's travels in his footsteps.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Travels with Raffles, November 6, 2003

By 

Boris Bangemann "boyse" (Singapore) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Duke of Puddle Dock: Travels in the Footsteps of Stamford Raffles (Hardcover)

In Singapore, Raffles is something of a patron saint. A shopping center carries his name, a subway station, a school, a hotel, and even the business class of Singapore Airlines has been branded "Raffles Class."

It comes as a bit of a surprise, then, that the city of Singapore features prominently in only one short chapter in Nigel Barley's "In the Footsteps of Stamford Raffles," which is the title of the English edition I have read. Penguin Books has probably realized that the title "The Duke of Puddle Dock" (a moniker evoking Raffles's humble background and high ambitions) is a bit unfortunate when it comes to marketing this hybrid between a travel book and a biography.

By far the largest part of the book deals with Indonesia. Barley interweaves accounts of his travels with biographical pieces about Raffles and Sukarno, the first president of Indonesia after the country became independent after World War II. Barley quotes extensively from the primary biographical material he used for the book. Both the "woven" structure and the long quotes make it difficult for the reader to really become engrossed in the life of Raffles. Perhaps Barley wanted to create some distance between the modern reader and his 18th century subject. In this case, however, the distance becomes such a gap that it is easy for the reader to lose interest in the book itself.

The Raffles who emerges from this book is most of all a man longing for recognition; a paternalistic officer of the British East India Company, good natured, benevolent, optimistic, learned, not very good at handling opposition, but very open-minded about what he sees in the Far East. Humanistic and dedicated to accumulating knowledge, he is not even thwarted by the loss of three of his four children or of all his treasures. When the ship on which he wanted to return to England sank off the coast of Sumatra, he lost his entire natural history collection: "One hundred and twenty-two cases of 'curiosities' were destroyed as well as all Raffles's papers. It was enough to break most men. But, as always, his greatest comfort was the love shown by his former subjects. The morning after their return to Bengkulu he began to redraw the maps he had been working on for years and sent locals into the forests to begin collecting specimens anew." (255) When Raffles finally returned to England and died at the age of 45, he left almost nothing. "Raffles had been unusual in spending freely on science and learning and had never stinted on creature comforts and hospitality, signs not of love of luxury but rather largeness of spirit." (264)

Barley is an entertaining writer with a fine sense of humor. Had he devoted more space to the historical background of the late 18th century and England's emerging imperialism in South East Asia, I would have enjoyed the book even more. One thing to remember from this book, though, is definitely Barley's description of the Durian, a local fruit beloved by Singaporeans for its taste and prestigious price: "the fruit like a football-sized conker, whose taste is halfway between caramel and swamp-water, with an after-whiff of rancid armpits." (135)

2.0 out of 5 stars Don't waste your time, March 4, 2011

By 

bookbytes (NW Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Duke of Puddle Dock: Travels in the Footsteps of Stamford Raffles (Hardcover)

On the remote chance that anyone reading this review also actually plans to read this obscure book, I urge you to pay heed to the full title: "The Duke of Puddle Dock. Travels in the Footsteps of Stamford Raffles". The book is far more about the unfocused self-indulgent ramblings and musings of the author, describing his travels in southeast Asia, than it is about the ostensible subject, Sir Stamford Raffles. Keep in mind also that the author is an anthropologist who unapologetically despises the group of Homo sapiens called tourists, with a particular bias against Aussie tourists. The book takes the form of interspersed brief descriptions of Raffles' life and times, similarly brief quotations from Raffles' own writings or those of his contemporaries who knew him, and much more protracted descriptions of Dr. Barley's experiences in trying to find surviving traces of Raffles in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. Most of the places the author describes in the book sound interesting, if you can get past all the anthropological observations about the specific inhabitants he encounters or the general cultures he experiences. Sometimes his observations are amusing. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call them witty, as the writer of the book's dust jacket trumpets. For an example of his dry humor, I quote from Chapter 12: Empires of the Imagination. "He held out an arm decorated with a great X of sticking plaster, as in a children's comic. Either scholarship was taken more seriously here than in England or other forces had been in play. I could not remember the last time one of my lectures had ended in a knife fight." Try never! The author tries hard, almost too hard at times, to portray himself as the objective, non-judgmental observer of the citizens of the countries he visits, while simultaneously exposing himself as highly judgmental toward all visitors except himself.

It was pure stubbornness, and a misbegotten hope that the book would improve, that led me to keep slogging until I finished it. I came away feeling as though I had learned less than nothing useful about Raffles the person, or his life - the little about him that could be gleaned from the book was so scattered both in spacing throughout the text, and in chronology of Raffles' life, that it was confusing more than enlightening. The comparisons between Raffles and Sukarno that dominated a portion of the book seemed forced, a thinly disguised excuse for plopping Barley's observations about Sukarno into the text. And by the end of the book I felt I had learned almost nothing useful about modern southeast Asia either. My rating of 2 stars for this colossal waste of time is only for the flashes of humor to be found in it...truly insufficient reason for anyone to invest their time reading this book. If ever there was a case of a book being over-hyped in descriptions on Amazon and in the book's dust jacket, this is it.

(The above review was also posted to my LibraryThing catalog. It is based on the Henry Holt 1992 hardcover edition, which lacked the photographs which apparently accompany some printings, but did not suffer from the poor type-setting referred to in other reviews.)