In this lively & engaging new biography, Harry Kelsey shatters the familiar image of Sir Francis Drake. The Drake of legend was a pious, brave, & just seaman who initiated the move to make England a great naval power & whose acts of pirac against his country`s enemies earned him a knighthood for patriotism. Kelsey paints a different & far more interesting picture of Drake as an amoral privateer at least as interested in lining his pockets with Spanish booty as in forwarding the political goals of his country, a man who became a captain general of the English navy but never waged traditional warfare with any success. Drawing on much new evidence, Kelsey describes Drake`s early life as the son of a poor family in sixteenth-century Engl&. He explains how Drake dabbled in piracy, gained modest success as a merchant, & then took advantage of the hostility between Spain & England to embark on a series of daring pirate raids on undefended Spanish ships & ports, preempting Spanish demands for punishment by sharing much of the his booty with the Queen & her councillors. Elizabeth I liked Drake because he was a charming rogue, & she made him an integral part of her war plans against Spain & its armada, but she quickly learned not to trust him with an important command: he was unable to handle a large fleet, was suspicious almost to the point of paranoia, & had no understanding of personal loyalty. For Drake, the mark of success was to amass great wealth---preferably by taking it from someone else---and the primary purpose of warfare was to afford him the opportunity to accomplish this. ...

A New Year`s feast at King Arthur`s court is interrupted by the appearance of a gigantic Green Knight, resplendent on horseback. He challenges any one of Arthur`s men to behead him, provided that if he survives he can return the blow a year later. Sir Gawain accepts the challenge & decapitates the knight but the mysterious warrior cheats death & vanishes, bearing his head with him. The following winter Gawain sets out to find the Knight in the wild Northern lands & to keep his side of the bargain. One of the great masterpieces of Middle English poetry, Sir Gawain & the Green Knight magically combines elements of fairy tale & heroic sagas with the pageantry, chivalry & courtly love of medieval Romance. ...

Part of a new series Legends from the Ancient North, Sir Gawain & the Green Knight is one of the classic books that influenced JRR Tolkien`s The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings. ” Tomorrow I must set off to receive that blow, to seek out that creature in green, God help me!” (J.R.R). Tolkien spent much of his life studying, translating & teaching the great epic stories of northern Europe, filled with heroes, dragons, trolls, dwarves & magic. He was hugely influential for his advocacy of Beowulf as a great work of literature &, even if he had never written The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings, would be recognised today as a significant figure in the rediscovery of these extraordinary tales. Legends from the Ancient North brings together from Penguin Classics five of the key works behind Tolkien`s fiction. They are startling, brutal, strange pieces of writing, with an elemental power brilliantly preserved in these translations. They plunge the reader into a world of treachery, quests, chivalry, trials of strength. They are the most ancient narratives that exist from northern Europe & bring us as near as we will ever get to the origins of the magical landscape of Middle-earth (Midgard) which Tolkien remade in the 20th century. ...

Preserved on a single surviving manuscript dating from around 1400, composed by an anonymous master, Sir Gawain & the Green Knight was rediscovered only 200 years ago, & published for the first time in 1839. One of the earliest great stories of English literature, after Beowulf, the poem narrates the strange tale of a green knight on a green horse, who rudely interrupts the Round Table festivities one Yuletide, casting a pall of unease over the company & challenging one of their number to a wager. The virtuous Gawain accepts, & decapitates the intruder with his own axe. Gushing blood, the knight reclaims his head, orders Gawain to seek him out a year hence, & departs. Next Yuletide Gawain dutifully sets forth... His quest for the Green Knight involves a winter journey, a seduction scene in a dream-like castle, a dire challenge answered
- & a drama of enigmatic reward disguised as psychic undoing.
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In 1845, British explorer Sir John Franklin set out on a voyage to find the North-West Passage
- the sea route linking the Atlantic
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Sir Joseph Hooker is remembered as an eminent Victorian botanist & one of Charles Darwin`s closest collaborators. Many gardeners & lovers of rhododendrons know of his plant collecting expedition in the Himalayas, but few are aware of his participation in Sir James Clark Ross`s epic voyage to Antarctica in 1839-43, of his to Syria & Lebanon in 1860, to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco in 1871, & to the Rockies & California in 1877. At some risk to his own safety & health he discovered many new species of plants introduced a number of attractive flowers into British gardens. Hooker was also an amateur artist who obsessively sketched landscape, flora &, occasionally, people & buildings. Ray Desmond has written a fascinating biography of a remarkable man. ...

Sir Robert Hunter (1844
- 1913) is one of three figures regarded as the principal founders of the National Trust. It was he who
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Sir Scallywag is back & mightier than ever! King Colin is in need of our 6-year-old-hero Sir Scallywag`s help again. This time he has set his sights on a Golden Sausage that will make him live for ever. Unfortunately it is guarded by hundreds of angry trolls. There`s only one boy for the job
- enter Sir Scallywag! As hilarious as ever, this will have children & parents roaring with laughter!
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When King Colin`s golden pants go missing, he calls for Sir Scallywag, the bravest knight in the l&. But.. . Sir Scallywag is only 6 years old & with an evil giant to pursue, it`s nearly mission impossible! Luckily, it`s a story of David & Goliath. With his trusted steed Doofus at his side, Sir Scallywag proves that even the unlikeliest hero can be the bravest knight of all. ...

” Sir Vidia`s Shadow” is a book that chronicles bestselling author Paul Theroux`s long friendship with writer V.S Naipaul from its beginning to untimely end with both funny & moving moments & stark honesty. ” Both unputdownable & utterly engaging”. (Jonathan Raban, ” The Times Literary Supplement”). ”I started reading Theroux ” Sir Vidia`s Shadow”, the story of his friendship with V.S. Naipaul over thirty years & five continents. I couldn`t, as they say, put it down. I don`t know of a more revealing study of the peculiar nature of friendship between professional writers, an unstable compound of empathy, solidarity & rivalry”. (David Lodge, ” Guardian” Books of the Year). ” Thoroughly compelling. We can call it a memoir, or a biographical sketch, but it has more in it
- more candour, more intensity, more angry puzzlement
- than we would normally expect from either of these genres”. (” Sunday Telegraph”). ” The portrait of Naipaul that emerged is uproariously believable...most people are damaged human beings. What distinguishes writers is that can turn their damage into something life-enhancing. That is what ” Sir Vidia`s Shadow” resplendently does”. (John Carey, ” Sunday Times”). American travel writer Paul Theroux is known for the rich descriptions of people & places that is often streaked with his distinctive sense of irony; his other non-fiction titles, ” Riding the Iron Rooster”, ” The Happy Isles of Oceania”, ” Sunrise with Seamonsters”, ” The Kingdom by the Sea”, ” The Tao of Travel”, ” Ghost Train to the Eastern Star”, ” The Old Patagonian Express”, ” The Great Railway Bazaar”, ” Dark Star Safari”, ” Fresh-air Fiend”, ” The Pillars of Hercules”, & his novels & collections of short stories, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize winner ” The Mosquito Coast” are available from Penguin.

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