Word: siam
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ANNA AND THE KING OF SIAM-Margaret London-John...
When Anna Leonowens entered the service of the King of Siam, that progressive monarch had 9,000 women in his harem. They lived in a small city adjoining his palace. In the center was a garden and artificial lake, where the princesses bathed and picked water lilies. There was a theater, a gymnasium, a temple where Anna Leonowens taught English. There were blacksmith shops, slave quarters, barracks for the amazon guards. King Mongkut and a few priests were the only men allowed inside its high stone walls...
When the King of Siam invited Anna to Bangkok, the royal summons read: "And we hope that in doing your education on us and on our children (whom English call inhabitants of benighted land) you will do your best endeavor for knowledge of English language, science, and literature, and not for conversion to Christianity. . . . We beg to invite you to our royal palace to do your best endeavorment upon us and our children...
What makes Anna and the King of Siam quietly engrossing reading is that ts fantastic story is true. Author Margaret Landon heard about Anna during her own ten-year stay in Siam. She read Anna's books and, in a chance meeting in 1939 in Evanston, Ill., met people who had known Anna. Anna and the King of Siam consists of 391 pages (with neat line drawings by Margaret Ayer) condensed from Anna's own discursive, old-fashioned writing. It is "75 percent fact, and 25 per cent fiction based on fact." Gilbert & Sullivan King. The King...
...thick-necked, barbaric, half-naked Prime Minister of Siam himself met her at the ship - but only to tell her that she was most unwelcome, that no arrange ments had been made for her care. Anna gritted her teeth, stayed...