The brute facts of Stamford Raffles's life are simple enough: he was born the son of an impoverished sea captain in 1781; at fourteen he joined the East India Company as an office boy and worked his way up to become a minor official on the island of Penang, off the coast of present-day Malaysia. Out of the blue, he was appointed Governor of Java. In 1819 he founded Singapore. However, the rest of his life is wrapped in a frowsy shroud of imperial velvet.Distrustful of the few primary sources available, Nigel Barley puts himself in Raffles's skin, exploring his traces in the stone and memories of the East and identifying those places Raffles invented or transformed. In the author's sure hands we meet not one Raffles but many. Dr. Barley takes us, literally and imaginatively, from Malacca to Java, Bali to Singapore. Sometimes his journey reveals the ghost of Raffles: in overgrown forts, lost gardens, poignant British cemeteries and dusty libraries. But he also brings us to the institutions that ostentatiously keep the great man's name alive today, such as the immaculate Raffles Institution in Singapore, with its optimistic motto, "The Hope of a Better Age."We discover other societies too--vibrant, confusing and colorful, whose different versions of their history turn out to be a rickety framework for knowledge. And we meet unforgettable characters, including a hotel-keep who holds a room in reserve for the Goddess of the South Seas. Finally, we confront Raffles's greatest personal triumph, the discovery of Raffles arnoldi, a vast parasitic flower, a meter across, big enough to hold a gallon and a half of fluid. Beyond the glories of empire, Raffles's true pride, Barley discovers, is that of a botanist. Read Less