de Leeuw, Evelyne | Paperback / softback | 11-04-2023 | 9789464800449

The question, really, is not who or what Rikste van Witzenburg-Meijer was.
My great-aunt; black sheep; adventuress; sartorial icon; party animal; truck driver; firewoman during the London Blitz; among the crew of a crashing Catalina; or passenger on the SS Rimutaka – core of the most heavily armed and longest-distance convoy of World War II.
The question is why she was who and what she was. Why did she become a self-declared journalist on the ocean liner JP Coen in 1927? Why did she marry queer Herman, frail man with strong connections? Why did Pangeran Soejono (Javanese nobility and member of the Netherlands East Indies’ Council) connect her to High Diplomacy? How did she become a security risk, and dangerous confidante, of a cross dressing Thai prince and an Indo boy who became the girlfriend of a Dutch Rear-Admiral?
And what happened in 1944 between her, her girlfriend and the Duke of Gloucester on the SS Rimutaka, single core of the most heavily protected and longest distance ocean convoy of the War?

The Rimutaka Singularity will race you from Arnhem to Bandung and Kensington, Wacol and Ternate. Its facts will astound you.