Black Hole: Fact or Fiction?

The man who would be king was based loosely on the Francis Younghusband Led british "conquest" of tibet in 1904.

are you sure about that? do you have your facts straight?

now is that fact or fiction?
don't take this thread into a movie discussion!

urban myth.

I read a john huston interview where he said so.(don't have the source offhand.)

I didn't start discussing the movie ..I think nadreg started it.I just happen to be the last car in the procession that gets the speeding ticket.

"The Man Who Would be King" was written in 1888 so Younghusband's adventures in Tibet couldn't have been
used as a model for the short story/movie.

Rumour has it that George Thomas - The Rajah from Tipperary's exploits actually prompted Kipling to put pen to paper. Although Thomas' adventures had occurred almost a century prior to the publishing of Kipling's story, an article in The Calcutta Review - Article I. George Thomas -An episode from the Great Anarchy by H.G. Keene published in 1880 may well have been the blueprint and inspiration to the story.

read that story here and decide for yourselves:

http://home.alphalink.com.au/~agilbert/rajah1.html

maybe not tibet...I don't rightly know, but most kipling stories were based on british indian (edit: ) army myth of the time.and in 1888 Younghusband was in the approximate region where the story is set..so it's likely that John huston's this one is based on facts.

After a brief wikipedia search..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunza_Valley

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Younghusband

talks about gokulgarh and sardhana , both of which are in Uttar pradesh, not across the khyber.

Georgegarh as he named it (no ego there), wasn't in UP but in Haryana near Hissar, I believe.

This is from another link:
George Thomas was an Irish mercenary who carved out his own state in Haryana at the end of the eighteenth century, and was a possible model for Peachey in Kipling's Man Who Would be King. 'The Rajah from Tipperary' built himself a palace, minted his own coins and collected about him a very considerable harem, but in the process totally forgot how to speak English; when asked at the end of his career to dictate his autobiography, he said he would be happy to do so as long as he could speak in Persian or Hindustani "as from frequent use they had become more familiar than his native tongue".

http://www.gpmsdbaweb.com/_supportdo...t%20native.htm

Speculation (quite inaccurately) on WD's part IMO..


Yeah I have a book called the white nabobs, (I'll look it up presently) that details these adventurer stories. this was only one of the many such people that did "go native" and sort of become king from mercenary..

it just looks like an unlikely source for kipling on two counts. 1. the dissimilarity with the story( minted coins , losing language, big harem...) 2. the SIMILARITY with the younghusband adventures (1.geographical region, 2. the time when the story was written 3. younghusband's charecter)...

First my street, then Abhiramapuram, then Mylapore. Soon, the whole of Chennai. Hey! the world could be mine if I start small.

And if I hadn't left it 150 years too late .

Nick-h you live in abhirampuram? then malar hospital is closer to you than appollo.

It's a movie , a twisted illusion , not reality , base on the thougths of some gora guys , no movie or novel can potray the reality nothing can justify the kinda abuse and atrocoties the brits did in India , some day it'll come back to them cause what goes around comes around , it's the KARMA of the brits , time will tell......

(aside... my general doc, who I met years back through a mutual friend, works at Apollo, then there's the reputation thing, etc etc.)