Author of The King Never Smiles, Paul Handley, was interviewed on Australian ABC radio last night. He was interviewed by the Late Night Live’s Phillip Adams. Despite Adams’ usual annoying distractions the interview is worth a listen with some interesting comments about Thaksin, the coup and the royal succession. You can listen to it online here (the interview with Handley starts about half way through the recording). The Late Night Live promo reads:
There is one topic in Thailand that is off limits: the King and his family. A journalist interested in doing a story about the monarchy will be given a range of excuses from “the palace has nothing more to say other than what has been put in the official press statements”, ot that the “subject is too susceptible and intricate for palace outsiders to handle”. Or simply that it “is too risky”.So, it is a major task to write a book about the King. It is even more difficult to investigate just how deeply intertwined the institution is in Thai politics and to what extent the monarchy gave its approval to the 18 coups that took place over the last few decades – including the overthrow of the elected Prime Minister in September this year.Paul Handley is a freelance journalist who has worked as a foreign correspondent in Asia for more than twenty years, thirteen of which were in Thailand. Thai authorities have banned his new book on the Thai king and blocked local access to websites advertising the book.
4 responses so far ↓
1 BF // Nov 22, 2006 at 6:45 am
You can listen to the tape of that interview online.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2006/1790433.htm
……
I got it from this discussion thread
http://www.prachatai.com/05web/th/board/showboard.php?QID=40055&TID=5
2 BF // Nov 22, 2006 at 11:46 am
Sorry I didn’t notice that you already put the link in the blog. My apology!
3 New Mandala » Banned but scanned // Nov 23, 2006 at 7:34 am
[...] Paul Handley’s political biography of King Bhumiphol, The King Never Smiles, is banned in Thailand. But I have noticed that that it has been scanned in full and is available, chapter by chapter, on a Thai website. [...]
4 New Mandala » Siam Rumoured: the Thongchai lecture in London // Dec 15, 2006 at 1:39 pm
[...] In Thongchai’s historical overview, Series 3 describes the power relations among what he rather playfully called “M/P3”. This is the series that focuses on the interactions between “Politicians (elected)/Money; People/Mass; Palace/Monarchists, Monarchy”. He sees this series, which begins in 1973, as heralding “the revival of the monarchy”. Speaking of the bloody events of October 1976, Thongchai argued that nobody mentions that “the King’s intervention is part of the massacre”. This is all part of Series 3. In this scheme, “Royalists now talk democracy” and have, very cunningly, created an “upper floor of politics”. This is a “second floor [that] provides the moral authority”. On this point, and as a digression, Thongchai briefly noted that Paul Handley’s widely debated book, The King Never Smiles, is, in his view, “not academic but worth listening to”. [...]
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