
Drake
The Life and Legend of an Elizabethan Hero
Stephen Coote(Author)
Simon & Schuster (Publisher)
Published on 7. February 2005
Book
Paperback/Softback
352 pages
978-0-7434-6870-1 (ISBN)
Description
Sir Francis Drake: pirate, explorer and Protestant zealot, a man princely in his bearing, heroic if sometimes foolhardy in his enterprise, a genius at once awe-inspiring and riddled with faults. He is the archetypal Elizabethan sea-dog, and Stephen Coote's brilliant new book rescues him from the dusty pages of history to breathe new life into one of the great maritime adventure stories. Focusing on the episodes that made Drake's reputation -- and exploring not just the nature of that reputation but how it also, for better or worse, came to epitomise a sense of nationhood -- Stephen Coote re-creates all the excitement and terror of the raids on Spanish Caribbean ports during Drake's privateering days; the extraordinary feat of the circumnavigation aboard the 'Golden Hind'; and Drake's role in the famous defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Told with novelistic verve, DRAKE is a thoroughly modern re-assessment of a man who embodied all the ebullient courage and personal shortcomings of the great age of Elizabethan expansion. Was Drake just a rabid anti-papist, a state-sponsored terrorist and slaver? Or was he the embodiment of English sang-froid, an empire-builder and hero? This gripping and entertaining biography gives us a picture of the man altogether richer and more interesting than we could have imagined.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Illustrations
8pp colour, 8pp b-w
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 130 mm
Thickness: 1 mm
Weight
274 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-7434-6870-1 (9780743468701)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Stephen Coote was educated at Magdelene College, Cambridge and at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of several acclaimed biographies including lives of Charles II, W. B. Yeats, John Keats and, most recently, Samuel Pepys: according to the SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, 'A subtle and intelligent portrait, not just of the man, but of the volatile political milieu in which he moved.'