MEET THE AUTHOR

Why did you want to write this book?

I’d just started a one-name study of the name Bowrey back in 2014, and one day I was doing a random search for the surname online when I came across references to Thomas. He lived at the end, and the first Malay–English dictionary, which he published in 1701. I just got more and more and more intrigued; he’d been involved in so many things. Everything was known about him, but very little was known about his personal life, and as a family historian you can’t ignore that.