The power list: 30 people who have shaped Singapore
Artists, architects and the wife of Singapore's founding father feature in the first of our three-part series, looking at the personalities who have helped engineer this country's DNA ... more

Want to find out more about Sir Stamford Raffles in the most humourous and insightful way? Or how to write historical fiction?

Nigel Barley is the author of twenty books, academic and popular, in genres as diverse as travel writing, fiction, biography and art history. In the Footsteps of Raffles and Rouge Raider are two of his books which have been written against the backdrop of Singapore and her history. In this session, Nigel will discuss some of the particular difficulties and satisfactions that lie behind various works, concentrating on those involving the history of Singapore and SE Asia. He will also tease out certain themes that have emerged increasingly over the years such as his motivation as a writer, his personal relationship to his subjects and the tension between randomness and structure.

Places are limited, so please register here as soon as possible.

This programme is in collaboration with the National Book Development Council of Singapore (NBDCS) and Monsoon Books Pte Ltd.

About the Author
Originally trained as an anthropologist, Nigel worked in West Africa, spending time with the Dowayo people of North Cameroon and from here, his first book which is a witty and informative account of anthropological filed work among the Dowayo people, 'The Innocent Anthropologist' was produced. He survived to move to the Ethnography Department of the British Museum and it was in this connection that he first traveled to Southeast Asia. After forays into Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan and Burma, Barley settled on Indonesia as his principal research interest and has worked on both the history and contemporary culture of that area. After escaping from the museum, he is now a writer and broadcaster and divides his time between London and Indonesia.

Dr Nigel Barley, popular author and former curator of The British Museum, will be speaking at the Asian Civilisations Museum on Saturday 15 August. Dr Barley will review some of the odd relationships between collectors and their collections, ranging from Stamford Raffles in Java to the British navy in Africa and sets them within the framework of unresolved questions of what museums are for. He draws on his own experience of writing and fieldwork in Africa and Asia, both as a popular author and a museum anthropologist, to show some of the ways in which people and objects become fatally entangled.

This talk is held in conjunction with the special exhibition at ACM, "Hunters and Collectors: The Origins of the Southeast Asian Collection", which is on show from 25 July to 21 September 2009.

Date: 15 August, Saturday
Venue: Asian Civilisations Museum, 1 Empress Place, Singapore 179555
Time: 2pm to 3.30pm
Ticket price: Free
MRT: Raffles Place
Bus: 100,130, 131, 167, 75

Following the talk, Dr Barley will be signing copies of "In the Footsteps of Stamford Raffles", "Island of Demons" and "Rogue Raider: The tale of Captain Lauterbach and the Singapore Mutiny" at the Museum bookshop.

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