ABSTRACT

SIR WALTER RALEGH was under sentence of death for high treason, a man ‘civilly dead’ when he began work on his History of the World. The long days in prison in the Tower were a challenge to the pride and spirit of the middle-aged adventurer. History became, for Ralegh, another voyage, with its own triumphs and adversities. Having long ago learned to bear the world’s adversities ‘manlike, and resolvedly’, he would write with uncompromising fidelity to what he understood to be timeless truth.