Sir Francis Drake

No armchair admiral will want to miss this lively portrait of a man who circumnavigated the globe, became the naval nemesis of Spain's Philip II and personified Elizabethan England's coming of age as a sea power. Illustrated.

'Excellent...It deserves to become the standard Drake life. His scholarship is impeccable.' - Frank McLynn, Sunday Telegraph *

'Excellent...he gives us throughout a highly sympathetic though not unbalanced portrait of a remarkable man.' - Linda Colley

'The scope of his book, and the skill with which he handles generally unreliable sources, is impressive...The accounts of the circumnavigation, the attack on Cadiz and the defeat of the Armada are a comprehensive, and as readable, as any that have yet appeared.' - Brendan King, Literary Review"