1 Greene, Stephen Lyon Wakeman, Absolute dreams: Thai government under Rama VI, 1910–1925 (Bangkok: White Lotus, 1999)Google Scholar, p. 142.

2 Suwannathat-Pian, Kobkua, Kings, country and constitutions: Thailand's political development 1932–2000 (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003)Google Scholar, p. 27.

3 Greene, Absolute dreams, p. 163. A tough press law was issued in 1923 in an attempt to curtail the name-calling. Barmé, Scot, Man, woman, Bangkok: Love, sex and popular culture in Thailand (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002)Google Scholar, chap. 4, discusses the cartoons.

4 Robert-Martignan, Léopold, La monarchie absolue Siamoise de 1350 à 1926 (Cannes: Robaudy, 1939)Google Scholar, p. 281.

5 Baker, Chris and Phongpaichit, Pasuk, A history of Thailand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)Google Scholar, p. 106.

6 Batson, Benjamin A., The end of the absolute monarchy in Siam (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1984)Google Scholar, p. 14; Greene, Absolute dreams, is a lightly revised version of the thesis.

7 Barmé, Man, woman, Bangkok, p. 116.

8 Anderson, Benedict R.O'G., ‘Studies of the Thai state: The state of Thai studies’, in The study of Thailand: Analyses of knowledge, approaches, and prospects in anthropology, art history, economics, history, and political science, ed. Ayal, Eliezer B. (Athens, OH: Southeast Asia Program, Center for International Studies, 1978)Google Scholar, p. 208, n. 24.

9 Mead, Kullada Kesboonchoo, The rise and decline of Thai absolutism (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004)Google Scholar, p. 127.

10 Vella, Walter F., Chaiyo! King Vajiravudh and the development of Thai nationalism, assisted by Vella, Dorothy B. (Honolulu: University Press of Hawai'i, 1978)Google Scholar.

11 Yothong, Chanan, Nai nai samai ratchakan thi 6 [Men of the inner palace during the sixth reign] (Bangkok: Matichon, 2013)Google Scholar.

12 nāi (นาย) = male boss, term of address for Mr; nai (ใน) = inside, inner. Chanan's wordsmithing is useful here, and I prefer to use the term nai nai, rather than ‘male courtiers’ or ‘male favourites’, or ‘gentlemen-in-waiting’, another translation that misses the point.

13 Wannawet, Nawin, ‘Nai nai kap panha “khwamjing nai ruang lao” lae “rang song khong adit”’ [Nai nai and the problem of ‘truth from oral evidence’ and ‘the spirit of the past’], Songkhla nakkharin 19, 2 (Mar.–June 2013): 248–50Google Scholar. Handley, Paul, The king never smiles (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006)Google Scholar. Another review by Phinyaphan Photchanalawan, ‘Nai nai royan ime “jin” khommiwniti’ [Nai nai: A royally imagined community], Prachatai, http://prachatai.com/journal/2013/06/47344 (last accessed 21 Oct. 2013), also pointed out the dangers of publishing such a book in the face of current prosecutions under the lese-majesty law. The referent is clearly Benedict Anderson's coinage of ‘imagined communities’ in his book now translated into Thai, but in addition to this allusion, ‘jin’ in quotation marks is shorthand for English ‘to imagine or fantasise something’.

14 Prachatai (English) online, http://prachatai.com/english/node/3666 (last accessed 14 Nov. 2013).

15 For estimates on sales and popularity I am grateful to Anuk Pitukthanin, personal communication, 22 Oct. 2013.

16 Nawin, ‘Nai nai and the problem’, p. 250. ‘Y girls’ (from Jap. yaoi, sometimes translated as boys' love) refers to female-oriented fictional media that originated in Japanese manga cartoons in which boy–boy affection is open and valorised; Preedee Hongsaton, personal communication, 16 Dec. 2013.

17 Loos, Tamara, ‘Sex in the inner city: The fidelity between sex and politics in Siam’, Journal of Asian Studies 64, 4 (2005): 883CrossRefGoogle Scholar, gives different statistics for the number of wives, 50 and 153 respectively.

18 Loos, ‘Sex in the inner city’, p. 896.

19 Nawin, ‘Nai nai and the problem’, p. 251. If there were any doubt from reading the book, and I had no doubt, Chanan affirmed in a discussion in Chiang Mai on 3 Apr. 2013 that his main theme is alternative masculinities.

20 Loos, ‘Sex in the inner city’, pp. 887–8.

21 Loos, ‘Sex in the inner city’, pp. 903–4, argues a strong case that a major change took place in the sixth reign in the regulation of the sexuality of men who worked in or near the palace.

22 The best accounts of the coup attempt are Numnonda, Thaemsuk, Yang toek run raek kabot ro. so. 130 [The first Young Turks and their 1912 revolt] (Bangkok: Ruangsin Press, 1979)Google Scholar and Kamutphitsamai, Atcharapon, Kabot ro. so. 130 kabot phua prachathippatai naew khit thahan mai [The 1912 revolt for democracy: New military thinking] (Bangkok: Amarin Academic Publishing, 1997).Google Scholar

23 Lipman-Blumen, Jean, ‘Toward a homosocial theory of sex roles: An explanation of the sex segregation of social institutions’, Signs 1, 3 (1976): 16CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Dowling, Linda, Hellenism and homosexuality in Victorian Oxford (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994)Google Scholar, p. 35, gives a definition from modern cultural theory of ‘reciprocal bonds of masculine interest, affection, and obligation’.

24 Greene, in Absolute dreams (pp. 73–74), states that there were 50 royal ‘favourites’, which he divides into various subgroups, but I do not see that Chanan uses or endorses this statistic.

25 Meechubot, Worachat, Phrabat somdet phraramathibodi sisinthara mahawachirawut phramongkutkhlao jaoyuhua phaendin sayam [King Vajiravudh, monarch of Siam] (Bangkok: Sangsan Buk, 2010)Google Scholar, p. 30, tells the story of Vajiravudh's appendectomy while he was studying in England.

26 ‘I (kha) regard you as my (jao) children, and you must think of me as your father’, quoted in Meechubot, Worachat, Kret phongsawadan ratchakan thi 6 [Historical anecdotes from the sixth reign] (Bangkok: Sangsan Buk, 2010)Google Scholar, p. 61.

27 Craig J. Reynolds, Review of Vella, Walter F., ‘Chaiyo! King Vajiravudh and the Development of Thai Nationalism’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 13, 1 (1982): 193.Google Scholar

28 Out of deference to the Phoengbun descendants, Prince Damrong Rajanubhab, the Jakri dynasty historian and Vajiravudh's uncle, declined to publish the chronicle of the third Bangkok reign while Vajiravudh was on the throne; Khruathong, Pramin, ‘Revealing the secrets of the Mom Kraison case’, Sinlapa watthanatham 31, 5 (2010): 88–103Google Scholar. See also Greene, Absolute dreams, pp. 75–6; Chanan, Nai nai, p. 60.

29 Loos, ‘Sex in the inner city’, pp. 882, 895–6.

30 Spiro, Melford, Burmese supernaturalism (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1967)Google Scholar, p. 220.

31 Preedee Hongsaton, personal communication, 25 Nov. 2013.

32 Thiraluk nai ngan phrarathchathan phloeng sop phon ek phonrua ek jaophraya ramrakhlp (m. l. fua phoengbun 26 thanwakhom 2510 [In memory: Royal cremation for General Admiral Ramrakhop 26 Dec. 1967], no pagination. Chanan does not mention Ramrakhop's family, and I thank Preedee Hongsaton for bringing this interesting fact to my attention.

33 Thaemsuk, The first Young Turks, p. 151. For a consolidated account of the Wild Tigers Corps and its place in the history of Thai paramilitary units, see Ball, Desmond and Mathieson, David Scott, Military redux: Or Sor and the revival of militarism in Thailand (Bangkok: White Lotus, 2007), pp. 4–10Google Scholar. Vella, Chaiyo!, discusses the Wild Tiger Corps on pp. 27–52.

34 Gilmore, David D., Manhood in the making: Cultural concepts of masculinity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990)Google Scholar, p. 121.

35 Chanan, Nai Nai, p. 200, and his ‘The all-male student culture’, p. 181.

36 Vella, Chaiyo!, p. 154.

37 Barmé, Scot, ‘Proto-feminist discourses in early twentieth century Siam’, in Genders and sexualities in modern Thailand, ed. Jackson, Peter A. and Cook, Nerida M. (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1999), pp. 146–51Google Scholar.

38 Chanan, pp. 104, 148, suggests comparisons with Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell (1857–1941), founder of the Boy Scouts, who married late in life at 55 and saw the physical rigours of scouting as a way of controlling the libido. Vella, Chaiyo!, p. 29, discounts the influence of Baden-Powell on the founding of the Wild Tigers Corps on chronological grounds.

39 Peleggi, Maurizio, Lords of things: The fashioning of the Siamese monarchy's modern image (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002)Google Scholar, pp. 13, 15.

40 Kullada, Rise and decline, p. 128, gives these dates, but no two historians Thai or foreign agree on the dates.

41 In various passages, e.g. p. 209, Chanan states that Eton was the model for Vajiravudh College, although just how and why the king used Eton as a model is not clear.

42 Examples of book titles are Soldier heroes: British adventure, empire, and the imagining of masculinities; Love, sex, intimacy and friendship between men, 1550–1800; Mapping men and empire; examples of articles are ‘Welcome to the men's club: Homosociality and the maintenance of hegemonic masculinity’; ‘Educating boys to be queer: Braddon's Lady Audley's secret’; ‘Sex and the single boy: Ideals of manliness and sexuality in Victorian literature for boys’; ‘Medicine, male bonding and homosexuality in Nazi Germany’; ‘The Boy Scouts and the “girl question”’; ‘Romantic friendship: Male intimacy and middle class youth in the northern United States, 1800–1900’.

43 Ellmann, Richard, Oscar Wilde (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988)Google Scholar, p. 306.

44 Dowling, Hellenism and homosexuality in Victorian Oxford.

45 Vella, Chaiyo!, has a good description of Dusit Thani (pp. 75–6). Founded in 1918, it had a constitution, a bank, a post office, several newspapers, and public services. Chanan, Nai nai, pp. 117–27 and 247, explains Dusit Thani as an example of localised Victorian.

46 See also Patrick Jory, ‘Thailand's politics of politeness: Qualities of a gentleman and the making of “Thai manners”’ (n.p.). The term translated as ‘gentleman’ is gender neutral in Thai language and could include women.

47 Gilmore, Manhood in the making, p. 189.

48 Ball and Mathieson, Militia redux, p. 48.

49 Eoseewong, Nidhi, ‘The culture of the army, Matichon Weekly, 28 May 2010’, in Bangkok May 2010: Perspectives on a divided Thailand, ed. Montesano, Michael J., Chachavalpongpun, Pavin and Chongvilaivan, Aekapol (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012)Google Scholar, p. 13.

50 Chaloemtiarana, Thak, Thailand: The politics of despotic paternalism, rev. ed. (Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 2007)Google Scholar, chapter 4.

51 Sopranzetti, Claudio, Red journeys: Inside the Thai red-shirt movement (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2012)Google Scholar, p. 124.

52 Phinyaphan, ‘Nai nai: a royally imagined community’.

53 http://prachatai.com/journal/2013/06/47387 (last accessed 23 Oct. 2013).

54 Vella, Chaiyo!, explains the realpolitik of this move, pp. 92–108. Batson, The end of the absolute monarchy in Siam, credits the move as a signal accomplishment of the reign, p. 19.

55 http://prachatai.com/english/node/3751 (last accessed 3 Dec. 2013).