Rarely have scribes held their breath for so long, with fingers cocked and keyboards at the ready. Finally, the news came that Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej had died. His passing unleashed a torrent of polite articles, carefully edited with the country’s powerful lèse majesté laws lurking in the background.
No one knows this better than Paul Handley. His biography of Bhumibol, The King Never Smiles, has been banned in Thailand since it was first published in 2006, which of course ensured healthy sales ever since.
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