There was also every reason to believe that Bhumibol shared the widespread contempt for his wayward son and would make Sirindhorn his heir instead at the opportune moment. The clearest signal of this was the extraordinary book The Revolutionary King by Canadian author William Stevenson, who spent several years in Bangkok in the 1990s after being personally enlisted by Bhumibol to write a semi-official biography. Stevenson was granted unprecedented access to King Bhumibol and his inner circle, obtaining hundreds of hours of interviews. No other writer, Thai or foreign, from outside the royal family has ever matched this level of access. The book was published in 1999 to near-universal derision from academics. It was riddled with basic factual errors as well as broader and more astonishing misunderstandings throughout, and no effort seemed to have been made to remedy them for its second printing in 2001. For this reason, scholars have tended to overlook the book’s significance. It should not be read as a work of serious history – on that level it is a risible failure. But as an insight into Bhumibol’s view of himself, and how the palace inner circle perceives reality, and how they want to be seen, it is absolutely invaluable. As Roger Kershaw wrote in a review of the book in Asian Affairs in 2001: