Sir Walter Raleigh: In Life and Legend

(Hardback)

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Description

New biography of one of the key figures in British history focusing on both his writing and legacy. Mark Nicholls is President and Librarian of St John's College, Cambridge.

Reviews

While the authors have the luxury of footnotes and the skill to do proper academic research they have the good fortune to be able to write for a general audience... An excellent biography. -- Contemporary Review, Volume 293, No. 1702
Every stage of [Raleigh's] life, works and reputation is carefully anatomized by Nicholls and Williams, and their biography will bring him vividly before new generations of readers. -- The Times Literary Supplement
Featured in London Review of Books, Volume 34, Number 5.
[Ralegh's career is] described with immense care and judiciousness by Mark Nicholls and Penry Williams in what will surely become the standard biography. -- London Review of Books
With this landmark book, Mark Nicholls and Penry Williams debunk the legends, giving us instead a story that is all the more engrossing for its sophistication.' -- The Sunday Times
Even in our own times, Ralegh has hardly lacked for either scholarly or popular interpreters, this new biography, learned and accessible in equal measure, is nonetheless highly welcome. It will surely become the standard starting point for any one interested in his career and writings.' -- Literary Review
There is so much more to Ralegh, more than one column or one book can cover. But Nicholls and Williams have given us a set of Ralegh stories that could keep us busy for a lifetime.' -- thepilot.com
Nicholls and Williams seek to dismember many myths that have grown around Raleigh yet in a book of great depth probe the ambitious and adventurous character of a man who was deeply interested in the New World... a tribute to [Raleigh] and his absorbing life. -- The Oxford Times
Nicholls and Williams are excellent on the narrative... they really come into their own in the accounts of the in-fighting at court and the way they bring out Ralegh's charisma and his duplicity. -- History Today
This is a thorough biography. -- John Hinton * Catholic Herald *
A man of middling birth, boundless enterprise, prodigious talent, sparkling charisma, and overweening ambition, Sir Walter Raleigh is a great subject for a great biography. Here it is. Stylishly written, judicious in its verdicts, based on archival research and the latest scholarship, this book, by a pair of Oxbridge dons, probes the infighting at court, grand affairs of state, religious and cultural developments, and Raleighs literary achievement with equal rigor and acuity. -- Benjamin Schwarz is The Atlantics literary editor and national editor * The Atlantic's Books of the Year *
Overall, Nicholls and Williams have produced an incredibly readable biography which analyzes several aspects of this enigmatic figure who paid the ultimate price for his ambitions at court. -- Cheryl Fury * The Northern Mariner/ Le marin du nord *

Author Bio

Mark Nicholls is President and Librarian of St John's College, Cambridge. Honorary Fellow of New College, Oxford. Sometime Lecturer in History at the University of Oxford.