Books: Emily & Tom

RAFFLES OF SINGAPORE (608 pp.)—Emily Hahn—Doubleday ($3.50).

In 1805, Tom Raffles, a clerk of the East India Company, took ship to the Indies, remarking casually to his aunt that he would come back a duke. "Ah, Duke of Puddle Dock," snorted the old lady (referring to a filthy slum in London's East End). When, 21 years later, the onetime clerk came home to die, he was Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles, Kt., founder and administrator of the rich island-fortress of Singapore, an imperial hero of the stature of Robert Clive and Warren Hastings, the man who put a stop to East Indian...