This is an autobiography in essays that conjures up a truly unique portrait of a world that is fast disappearing. Christopher Ondaatje is a true child of the British Empire. Born in Ceylon in 1933 & brought up on a tea plantation, he was sent as a teenager to boarding school in Engl&. But soon after Ceylon was granted its independence in 1948, his family found themselves destitute, & the young Ondaatje left school & got a job. From these beginnings there followed a series of commercial triumphs until 1988 when he abruptly abandoned high finance at the peak of his career & reinvented himself as an explorer & an author, focusing mainly on the colonial period. It is the curious encounters behind these often precarious adventures that make up this book. The stories tell of Ondaatje`s childhood days, his early life in Canada, his fascination with inexplicable events & local superstitions, & sometimes perilous travels researching his acclaimed biographies. Illustrated throughout with original images by Ana Maria Pacheco, ” The Last Colonial” lives up to the romance of its tantalizing title.