Sylvia, Queen of the Headhunters

July 7, 2014
Impulsive and melodramatic, Sylvia Brett Brooke embraced her role as the Ranee, or queen, of Sarawak, a Borneo Island kingdom and British Protectorate (now part of Malaysia) that had changed little even through WWI. Eade (Prince Philip) supplements his candid account with personal papers of several involved parties, often delivering Sylvia's point of view through her admittedly unreliable memoirs and correspondence, to reveal her difficult childhoodâlightened by British royal visitsâand her ensuing desperation for approval. Called "catty" and shallow by family and friends, Sylvia proves tough to like but her story deepens with the deftly described collapse of the Asian paradise's government during WWII and subsequent cession to the British. Her rich experiences fueled her writing career and Hollywood aspirations, accentuated by the truth that her subjects included a tribe of active headhunters and her open marriage in which she helped her husband procure lovers. Sylvia's reign proved as untraditional as she was; dividing her time between her two countries and repeatedly inserting herself into political intrigue and succession battles. Sylvia rarely won anything besides attention, but history has mostly forgotten her and, as Eades notes, "her notoriety evidently expired before she did."

May 15, 2014
British journalist Eade debuts with a well-written biography of Sylvia Brett Brooke (1885-1971), a tale that doubles as a history of the last days of the Raj.The story takes place in Sarawak, a kingdom on the island of Borneo ruled from 1842 on by the autocratic Brooke family. The eponymous headhunters were the Dyaks, a ferocious and warlike people whose traditional practices the Brookes tried to eliminate, with mixed results. Sylvia's husband, Vyner Brooke, became the third White Rajah of Sarawak in 1917, and she dubbed herself "queen of the headhunters" in her fanciful memoirs. Although an ineffective, irresponsible, disordered, hedonistic and largely absentee ruler, Vyner was vaguely devoted to providing for the welfare of his people, who loved him and celebrated whenever he and Sylvia returned to Sarawak. They rarely spent more than a few months per year in Sarawak, mostly to avoid the English winters. At home and abroad, Sylvia wrote novels, painted and night-clubbed; the author refers throughout to her unrestrained behavior and stories that "can't be put on paper" but offers few specific examples. The ones he does provide-painting portraits of prostitutes, too much drinking and dancing-seem hardly excessive by the admittedly extravagant standards of colonial rulers. The Brookes were exceptional in their spending habits, however, leading a very high life (though rarely together) when back in England. The appearance of Machiavellian Gerard MacBryan as Vyner's private secretary in the late 1920s launched years of plots about the succession; Sylvia was determined that her daughters not be excluded by primogeniture, but the Japanese settled the question by invading in 1941. Vyner and Sylvia were, of course, elsewhere at the time.Vivid portraits of some fairly crazy Brits and a way of life that deserved to be doomed.

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May 15, 2014
Eade has resurrected a relatively minor historical figure, with mixed results. While Sylvia Brooke's role as the wife of Sir Vyner Brooke, otherwise known as the last White Rajah of Sarawakroughly, the eastern half of Borneoserves as a rather interesting footnote to a period of excess and transition, the fact that her own r'sum' includes few personal achievements and ambitions significantly reduces her interest as the primary subject of a full-length biography. Still, for those intrigued by the peculiarities of the British raj and the waning days of the empire, this makes fascinating reading. Although there is little to admire about Sylvia, a rather shallow and hedonistic woman, her personal chronicle does provide a window into an exotic and, thankfully, all but vanished colonial world.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2014

The wife of Sir Vyner Brooke, the last White Rajah, who ruled the jungle kingdom of Sarawak on Borneo, Sylvia Brooke was one of those wildly over-the-top British socialites who make such good reading. Eade's first book has been called "amazing" (Daily Express), biting (London Times), and (love this) "rather giddying" (London Sunday Times).

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