Iain Gately was raised in Hong Kong and studied law at Cambridge. He is the author of La Diva Nicotina, Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol, and Rush Hour: How 500 Million Commuters Survive the Daily Journey to Work. He lives in Dorset.

An incident-filled, fascinating and brilliantly written slice of history centred on a relatively unknown 16th-century figure whose almost Zelig-like adventures allow a new light to be brought on the extraordinary era of privateering, trading, and a colonising dynamic that set the key note for our own troubled world.

Iain Gately was raised in Hong Kong and studied law at Cambridge. He is the author of La Diva Nicotina, Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol, and Rush Hour: How 500 Million Commuters Survive the Daily Journey to Work. He lives in Dorset.

An incident-filled, fascinating and brilliantly written slice of history centred on a relatively unknown 16th-century figure whose almost Zelig-like adventures allow a new light to be brought on the extraordinary era of privateering, trading, and a colonising dynamic that set the key note for our own troubled world.

Iain Gately was raised in Hong Kong and studied law at Cambridge. He is the author of La Diva Nicotina, Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol, and Rush Hour: How 500 Million Commuters Survive the Daily Journey to Work. He lives in Dorset.

An incident-filled, fascinating and brilliantly written slice of history centred on a relatively unknown 16th-century figure whose almost Zelig-like adventures allow a new light to be brought on the extraordinary era of privateering, trading, and a colonising dynamic that set the key note for our own troubled world.