Singapore's Founding Father Lee Kuan Yew as a Lover

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This August, Singapore will celebrate its 60th anniversary. To mark the occasion, a new book has been published that offers a never-before-seen, deeply personal look at founding father Lee Kuan Yew and his closest allies during the city-state’s formative years.

While Lee Kuan Yew is widely regarded as the architect of modern Singapore, it was in fact ten individuals who signed the separation agreement in 1965 that formally established the nation’s independence from Malaysia. Much has been written about these men, usually in the context of politics, economics, and nation-building.

But they were more than just statesmen: they were men who fell in love, kept secrets, wrote ghost stories, and played sports – not just golf.

Passionate Writer of Ghost Stories

To coincide with Singapore’s 60th National Day on 9 August 2025, acclaimed journalist and author Peh Shing Huei, together with a team of top writers, is releasing a book titled «The First Fools.» The volume offers an intimate, often surprising glimpse into the private lives of the men who helped found Singapore.

Through stories drawn from everyday life, the authors craft vivid portraits of individuals navigating between their duties to the state and their personal and family lives. The result is a collection of charming, touching, and humanizing snapshots, filled with warmth, affection, and sensitivity. We encounter Lee Kuan Yew not only as a statesman, but also as a man in love; and S. Rajaratnam, the diplomat and Singapore's first Foreign Minister, as a passionate writer.

The B-Sides of the A-Team

The book requires no prior knowledge and is accessible to any reader. At the same time, it serves as a valuable companion piece to the bestselling «The Last Fools,» published three years ago, which depicted the men in their public roles alongside Lee Kuan Yew.

As Peh Shing Huei explains in an interview with finews.asia, this new volume presents «the B-Sides of the A-Team.» And indeed, the book is rich with memorable anecdotes that add a welcome sense of humanity to Singapore’s famously disciplined and meticulously planned journey to success.

Unique Historical Narrative

Most of these stories have rarely, if ever, been shared with the public. Ultimately, they form a unique historical narrative that reveals the softer, more personal side of the pioneering figures who laid the foundation for modern Singapore.

Peh Shing Huei is a journalist and an author who has written 13 books, including numerous No. 1 bestsellers in Singapore. They include Tall Order and Standing Tall, a pair of biographies on former Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong. His maiden book, When the Party Ends: China’s Leaps and Stumbles after the Beijing Olympics, won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2016. He was a news editor and China bureau chief at The Straits Times, and read politics at Columbia University in New York and the National University of Singapore. In 2015, he founded The Nutgraf, an integrated communications agency in Singapore.

«The First Fools – B-Sides of Lee Kuan Yew's A-Team»

ISBN: 978-981-17770-7-3 (Paperback)
Publisher: The Nutgraf Books