THE 1001 LIVES OF SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON

Synopsis

He was both a boxer and an outstanding fencer, the best in England, a soldier and then a war strategist, a geometer and topographer, a columnist and draftsman, a spy and an explorer: he founded the London Society of Anthropology to make fun of the conformity of the National Geographic Society… I see you moving in your armchair, but allow me to continue… Author, poet and translator: we owe him in particular the first adaptation of The Thousand and One Nights and the Kâma-Sûtra which surprisingly escaped the censorship of our beloved Queen. Lovers of an Islam of the Enlightenment, renowned ethnologist. His writings on Sindh and its rites, on Africa and its customs are now taught in Oxford, he has never ceased to raise the barriers of ignorance. Hypnotist and skilled in esotericism, he coined the term EPS “extra sensory perception”, he became at the end of his life consul of Great Britain in Brazil, in Damascus in Syria and finally in Trieste in the service of our Queen Victoria who, as you know, made him a knight of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George. It can be said that he was thus recognized late by his peers and by his country…
Are you still nodding…?

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