Sylvia, Queen of the Headhunters: An Eccentric Englishwoman and Her Lost Kingdom

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 childhood%E2%80%94lightened by British royal visits%E2%80%94and 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." (June)