Sir Walter Raleigh: Being a True and Vivid Account of the Life and Times of the Explorer, Soldier, Scholar, Poet, and Courtier--The Controversial Hero of the Elizabethan Age

"Engaging and thorough . . . the best modern biography of the man. Why isn't there a great movie about Sir Walter Raleigh? His life had everything."
-Los Angeles Times

Tall, dark, handsome, and damnably proud, Sir Walter Raleigh was one of history's most romantic characters. He founded the first American colony, gave the Irish the potato, even trifled with the Virgin Queen's affections. To his enemies, he was an arrogant liar, deserving of every one of his thirteen years in the Tower of London. Regardless of means, Raleigh's accomplishments are unquestionable: he was the epitome of the English Renaissance man.

Raleigh Trevelyan has traveled to each of the principal places where Raleigh adventured-Ireland, the Azores, Roanoke, and the Orinoco-finding new insights into Raleigh's extraordinary life. His research gives a freshness and immediacy to this detailed, convincing portrait of one of the most compelling figures from the Elizabethan era.

Raleigh Trevelyan, a descendant of Sir Walter Raleigh, was for many years a distinguished publisher; his previous books include The Fortress and Rome 44. During the last two decades he has combed British, Spanish, Italian, and his own family's archives to write this authoritative life. Sir Walter Raleigh was a London Sunday Times Book of the Year. Mr. Trevelyan lives in London and Cornwall.