PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Elleke Boehmer is the Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford, and Director of the Oxford Centre for Life Writing at Wolfson College. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. A founding figure in the field of colonial and postcolonial literary studies, she is the author, editor, or co-editor of over twenty books, including monographs and novels. Her monographs include Colonial and Postcolonial Literature (1995/2005), Stories of Women (2005), Indian Arrivals (winner ESSE prize, 2015-16), and Postcolonial Poetics (2018). Her novels include The Shouting in the Dark (co-winner, Olive Schreiner Prize, 2015), and Screens Against the Sky (short-listed David Higham Prize, 1990). Her second collection of short stories, To the Volcano, appeared in 2019. Robert Baden-Powell was born in 1857 and served in the British Army in India, Afghanistan and, later, West and southern Africa. His extemporising command of the siege of Mafeking during the Anglo-Boer War elevated Baden-Powell to the status of imperial symbol, lone hero of an empire under threat. In Scouting for Boys he mixed his love for the outdoors, and delight in play-acting, together with the games ethic of the Victorian public school, and processed these into a newly minted tradition, Britain's most successful recreational export of the twentieth century. His prolific production of Scouting texts continued unstinted virtually until his death, in 1941 in Kenya.
very good fun * Max Hastings, Sunday Telegraph * the value of Elleke Boehmer's well-annotated text of the original edition is to show us the anxieties, contradictions and excitements of the Boy Scout movement at its inception * Alan Hollinghurst, Guardian * Elleke Boehmer's erudite introduction makes you wish she would get around to writing a full-length biogaphy of the first Chief Scout * William Cook, New Statesman * this fascinating volume tells us a lot about Baden-Powell, his movement and even to some extent the particular point in time when scouting was born' * Washington Times * Baden-Powell's work is well worth reading and re-reading, and that researchers with various interests and theoretical persuasions may find in its pages a great deal of interesting and rewarding material. * Thomas Kullman, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen * a gripping read * The Oldie *
