Sir Walter Raleigh

Sir Walter Raleigh’s paradoxical life threads through global scenes, from Elizabethan glory to his Stuart-era downfall.

Dispersed throughout the centuries and across the globe – a sleepy Devonshire village, a 1950s Hollywood film set, a horse hurtling on a Victorian racecourse, the Beatles meditating in India, a border dispute in South America, and a storm raging in the Outer Banks of North Carolina in 1993… they all lead back to Sir Walter Raleigh. 

He is the man of paradoxes: the outsider who wanted access to the royal court, a monarchist who later became a republican hero, a lover and a fighter, a pirate and a poet, the last great Elizabethan superstar and the first victim of the Stuart dynasty. Let’s chart his rise, his fall, and his legacy.

David Wildman has taught history for the past decade at South Devon College, specializing in the Tudor period and local studies. He has written a number of journal articles relating to Cornish history and maintains a blog (Dave Does History) in which he writes about a wide range of issues relating to the past. The Tudor Empire is his first book.