Christopher Ondaatje
Riddle of A River
The manuscript of this book was incomplete when the author, Guy Yeoman, died in 1998. It is by far the best thing ever published on the sources of the Nile and goes a long way to finally disproving the accepted but erroneous theory that John Hanning Speke found the origin of the Nile when he ‘discovered’ Lake Victoria in 1858. The lake is not the source. It is, however, one of the two great reservoirs for that river, the other being Lake Albert.
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'"Dutch Light" roots its subject in his local environment, explaining, for example, how an abundance of sand for making glass led naturally to a thriving business in optical instruments in Holland.'
Patricia Fara on the life & work of Christiaan Huygens.
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