A01=Maurice Collis
Author_Maurice Collis
Category=DNB
Conflict
Drugs
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Faber Finds
Military
War
Product details
- ISBN 9780571240852
- Weight: 404g
- Dimensions: 135 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 29 May 2008
- Publisher: Faber & Faber
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Foreign Mud is one of the most distinguished of Maurice Collis' works of history. This account of the struggle between the British and Chinese in the Opium War in Canton in the 1830s has a vividness that comes from 20 years of experience in the Far East as a civil servant.
'The story of the Opium War does not lend itself to natural composition; it violates all the established rules of dramatric art; it does not begin at the right moment and it prolongs its end long after the climax has been reached. Collis has handled this intraceable material with surety of touch . . . The result is a self-contained narrative, lucid, balanced and creating a untiy of impression . . . so lucid, so human, so amusing, and so fair.' Daily Telegraph
Maurice Collis was born in 1889, the son of an Irish solicitor. He entered the Indian Civil Service in 1911 and was posted to Burma, rising to the position of district magistrate in Rangoon in 1929, where the independence of his judgments displeased his superiors who moved him to the position of Excise Commissioner. He returned to England in 1934. He wrote over twenty books, including volumes of autobiography, travel writing, novels, histories and three plays. He died in 1973.
