As a bookish child growing up on Merseyside in the 1980s, Matthew Baylis identified with the much-mocked Prince Philip as a fellow outsider. He even had a poster of him on his bedroom wall. Years later, his Philip-worship long behind him, and now studying anthropology, Baylis discovered the existence of a Philip cult on the South Sea island of Tanna. Why was it there? Nobody had a convincing answer. Nobody even seemed to want to find one. His curiosity fatally piqued, Baylis travelled over 10,000 miles to find a society both remote and slap-bang in the shipping-lanes of history. A place where US airmen, Lithuanian libertarians, Corsican paratroopers and Graeco-Danish Princes have had as much impact as the missionaries and the slave-traders. On the rumbling slopes of this remarkable volcanic island, banjaxed by daily doses of the local narcotic, suffering from a diet of yams and regularly accused of being a divine emissary of the Duke, Baylis uncovered a religion unlike any other on the planet. Self-deprecating, hilarious and enlightening, "Man Belong Mrs Queen" is travel writing at its horizon-expanding best. AUTHOR: Born in Nottingham in 1971, Matthew Baylis is a novelist, journalist and scriptwriter. His latest novel, "A Death at the Palace", was published by Old Street in March this year, to terrific reviews. After adapting Catrin Collier's series of novels for BBC 1, he went to work in Kenya and Cambodia, training local scriptwriters and creating TV dramas for the United Nations and BBC World Service Trust. After a spell living in a remote mountain village on the Pacific island of Tanna , he returned to Britain to take up his present role as television critic for the Daily Express, and continue to write films and tv dramas for the Far East. REVIEWS: "With an appealing protagonist, a cast of vivid characters and a powerful sense of place, this is an excellent crime novel as well as a sharply observed slice of contemporary London life ? and the good news is that it promises to be the first in a series." - Guardian "A Death at the Palace" "London positively seethes off the page" - Kevin Sampson on "A Death at the Palace" SELLING POINTS: ? Baylis is a natural raconteur: erudite, funny and likeable ? 'Seriously funny' travel writing ? Bill Bryson meets Bruce Parry (with the slightest of nods to Levi-Strauss) ? There have been TV programmes about the cult, but this is the first book: it goes deeper, and overturns many misconceptions ? Is Philip becoming a national treasure?! ? Baylis's star is in the ascendancy after the success of "A Death at the Palace"
