A Malayan White Mischief.

'On Sunday, 23 April 1911, Ethel Proudlock attended Mass at St Mary's Church in Kuala Lumpur. She was well-liked at St Mary's. She helped with jumble sales and had recently joined the choir. After Mass, the vicar's wife invited her to lunch. But Mrs Proudlock declined. She had sewing to do. Then, taking her leave, she drove home and killed her lover.'

During the first half of this century, the British ruled Malaya with an unhealthy blend of devout surburban aspiration of the traditional Home Counties variety and extreme cruelty to the native population, something far from the love-hate relationship that characterised the European in India.

There are qualities of Somerset Maugham (The Letter was based on the Proudlock trial) and Conrad (Heart of Darkness, obviously) in Eric Lawlor's book. Petty, hypocritical and generally terribly unhappy, the British never counted Malaya as home, and spent their time wishing they weren't there and behaving as if they weren't.

Into this world of simmering race hatreds and dislocated Britishness came Ethel Proudlock, and to find out about her and to delve back into the past, Eric Lawlor will travel to Malaya to experience the aftermath of that society, to see who is still there from the old days, to discover whether real life is and was stranger than the fiction it bred. When Ethel Proudlock left Penang in 1911, she was alone, her husband having been detained in Kuala Lumpur. He had accused the police of testifying against his wife and faced libel charges. It is not known if they ever saw each other again, nor what became of their child. In 1918, she was confined to a mental institution.

Books by Eric Lawlor