The King Never Smiles

The King Never Smiles is an unauthorized biography of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej by Paul M. Handley, a freelance journalist who lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in Asia for more than twenty years, including thirteen in Thailand. Handley had previously worked for the Far Eastern Economic Review. The book was published by Yale University Press in July 2006. The book was banned in Thailand before publication and the Thai authorities have blocked local access to websites advertising the book. Books using The King Never Smiles as a reference have also been censored.

Book summary

The publicity materials at the Yale University Press website originally described the book as telling "the unexpected story of (King Bhumibol Adulyadej's) life and 60-year rule — how a Western-raised boy came to be seen by his people as a living Buddha, and how a king widely seen as beneficent and apolitical could in fact be so deeply political, autocratic, and even brutal... Blasting apart the widely accepted image of the king as egalitarian and virtuous, Handley convincingly portrays an anti-democratic monarch who, together with allies in big business and the murderous, corrupt Thai military, has protected a centuries-old, barely modified feudal dynasty." Yale University Press Senior Editor John Kulka has called the book an "interpretive biography".

The New York Times noted that the book "presents a direct counterpoint to years of methodical royal image-making that projects a king beyond politics, a man of peace, good works and Buddhist humility." The Times also noted, "The book describes [the King's only son], Vajiralongkorn, as a willful man prone to violence, fast cars and dubious business deals."

Censorship in Thailand

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Well before its release, in January 2006, the Thai Information and Communications Ministry banned access to the book and blocked access from Thailand to the book's page on the Yale University Press website and at Amazon.com . In a statement dated 19 January 2006, Thai National Police Chief General Kowit Wattana said the book has "contents which could affect national security and the good morality of the people." .

On July 19 2006, ThaiDay, an English-language Thai paper, reported that the Thai government made great efforts to suppress the book, even contacting former American president George Herbert Walker Bush and the president of Yale University to help them.

Since then, the ban on Amazon pages and the Yale University Press page has been lifted or is erratically applied.

Chulalongkorn University professor Jai Ungphakorn's 2007 book A Coup for the Rich was removed from the shelves of the Chulalongkorn University Book Center after a manager of the state-run university's book store found that it listed The King Never Smiles as a reference.

Duelling biographers

The Handley book was published six years after the first biography of King Bhumibol, "The Revolutionary King" by William Stevenson. Handley commented on the Stevenson book on pp.437-439 of "The King Never Smiles":

"Ten years earlier, Bhumibol had invited William Stevenson, the author of the original Intrepid, to write the book. Stevenson lodged in the princess mother's Srapathum Palace and was provided research support and unprecedented interviews with court staff and the king himself ... The result was a book that presents Bhumibol as truly inviolate, magical, and godly ... the book is chock-full of the standard Ninth Reign mythology, matching the view of the palace and royal family projected in Thai publications .... When it came out, the book proved a misadventure. Stevenson was liberal with style and careless with facts to the point of embarrassing the palace. His errors were legion. The book opened with a map that showed Thailand in possession of significant portions of Laos and Burma, and put the king's Hua Hin palace 300 kilometers and a sea away from where it should be. It ended with a genealogical chart naming Rama VII as the son of his brother Rama VI ... (But) Thousands of copies circulated in Thailand, and the general reaction was to castigate the author's failings while not questioning the essence of his story, the magical and sacral monarchy of Bhumibol Adulyadej."

Stevenson reviewed the Handley book in the Asian Wall Street Journal and the Wall Street Journal Online (June 16, 2006)

"Thais dislike seeing in print careless references to their king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, the reigning Ninth Rama of the Chakri dynasty. The king is venerated as a guardian of ancient traditions that are believed to have saved the Thai people from imperialists, communists and neocolonialists. They will disapprove of Paul Handley's gossipy, unfair account of this apotheosized man, the world's longest-reigning monarch. Mr. Handley casts the king as an enemy of democracy who, to solidify his once-shaky authority, allied himself with scheming generals and crooked politicians. None of this can be supported by the facts ... Mr. Handley focuses more upon the king's allegedly Machiavellian virtues than his spiritual ones. He writes, 'Bhumibol's restoration of the power and prestige of the throne was ... the fruit of a plodding, determined, and sometimes ruthless effort by diehard princes to reclaim their birthright, [and] Bhumibol's unquestioning commitment to the restoration under their tutelage.' ... Mr. Handley has largely turned King Bhumibol's story into a political screed to suit the prejudices of those with a stake in sidelining the monarch."

Critical reception

The book has had a generally positive reception among critics and scholars. The New York Review of Books called it, "one of the most important books on Thailand to appear in English." It further noted that, "The originality of Handley's book lies in his tough but I think fair-minded analysis of the revival of royal authority under King Bhumibol."

In a review in the New Left Review, Duncan McCargo of the University of Leeds called The King Never Smiles an "important book," that was, "fluently written and grounded in very considerable research." McCargo noted that while Handley's account, "draws on insights into the Thai monarchy from a range of scholars and writers, including Christine Gray, Kobkua Suwannathat-Pian and MR Sukhumbhand Paripatra," his narrative, "moves far beyond the parameters of these precursors. It has a salience and an urgency well beyond that of any ordinary biography..." McCargo praised Handley's, "understanding of Bhumibol as a political actor, as the primary architect of a lifelong project to transform an unpopular and marginalized monarchical institution—on the verge of abolition more than once—into the single most powerful component of the modern Thai state." McCargo also noted Handley's, "brilliantly intuitive grasp of the seedy interplay between money and power," regarding the workings of the Crown Property Bureau. In addition, McCargo noted Handley's, "evident empathy with his subject."

The book was the object of numerous reader's reviews on the Amazon website (some written even before the book was published), ranging from adulation to spite. The King Never Smiles sparked a lot of controversy, showing how issues regarding the life and deeds of the king are sensitive ones. Some went to the extent of accusing Thaksin Shinawatra of hiring the author to write it, but the most common critic is that foreigners can not understand the King and the Thai monarchy. However, several reviews praised the book for the quality of its research, though some question the sources used by Handley and his motives for writing this book.

Publication history

The book was commercially successful. By October 2006, the book went through three printings. Although the book was banned in Thailand, samizdat photocopies of the book were available for sale in the Tha Phrachan district of Bangkok.. Unauthorized translations of sections of the book appeared on several websites.

Further reading

• Paul Handley's response to Grant Evans’ September 2006 book review in the Far Eastern Economic Review
• Preface and Introduction of the book, Adobe Acrobat format, Yale University Press

See also

• Censorship in Thailand
• Bhumibol Adulyadej
• William Stevenson