Ebook: The Inordinately Strange Life of Dyce Sombre: Victorian Anglo-Indian MP and 'chancery Lunatic'

The descendent of European mercenaries and their Indian concubines, raised by a stepmother who began as a courtesan and became the Catholic ruler of a cosmopolitan kingdom, David Ochterlony Dyce Sombre (1808-1851) defies all classification. Sombre took advantage of the sensual pleasures of privilege but lost his kingdom to the British. Exiled in London, he married the daughter of a Protestant viscount and bought himself election as an MP, only to be expelled for corruption. His treatment of his life led to his arrest as a Chancery 'lunatic'. Sombre then spent years trying to reclaim his sanity and fortune. In this captivating biography, Michael H. Fisher recovers Sombre's unconventional life and its implications for modern conceptions of race, privilege and empire.