Reference
AU10/96/1
Title
Monograph on James Brooke by Simon Houfe read at his funeral service [see AU10/96/2]:
- a small, dapper man with impeccable manners, considered something of a mystery in Ampthill;
- Houfe's father had know him for sixty years;
- his great great uncle was Sir James Brooke KCB who conquered Sarawak on Borneo [Malaysia] in 1841 and became Rajah, his son and grandsons ruling it for the next century;
- Charles James Vyner Craig Brooke was born in Jun 1911, son of Harry Brooke, third son of the Rajah and Dorothy Craig; his mother died when he was eighteen months and his father when he was thirteen when he went to live with his French grandmother Margaret, Lady Brooke, Ranee of Sarawak in Ascot [Berkshire], London and Lelant [Cornwall]; he attended Stowe School [Buckinghamshire]; as a child he met Sir Edward Elgar, Sir William Rothenstein, author W.H.Hudson, Henry James and Oscar Wilde; he was very fond of music;
- he entered the Government Service in Sarawak in 1934, returning in 1938, lodging with the Fraser family in Lelant, then in Clophill and finally Ampthill, in Dunstable Street, he enjoyed watching a neighbour [David] Slade, the saddler at work;
- he contracted meningitis during the war but recovered and served with the Royal Military Police at D-Day;
- he attended the International Cello Centre at Dunns [Roxburghshire] for twenty years becoming friendly with cellist Stephen Isillis;
- he was a member of Bedford Music Society, Woburn Association of Decorative Art Societies, Ampthill Preservation Society and St.John's Ambulance
Date free text
1995
Production date
From: 1841 To: 1995
Level of description
item