Sir Walter Ralegh (Phoenix Press) [Paperback]

Robert Lacey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 30, 2001 | Series: Phoenix Press

Colorful and exciting, Sir Walter Ralegh became a favorite of Queen Elizabeth. This world-famous explorer conceived and organized the colonizing expeditions to America; introduced potatoes and tobacco to England, and ended up in the Tower, following his secret wedding to Bess Throckmorton where he was executed. Along with his more well-known exploits, this insightful study--the first based on an accurate chronology of Ralegh's own writings--offers startling disclosures about his other love affairs, an illegitimate child, and a failed suicide attempt.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Robert Lacey, a former magazine editor and journalist, is the author of many best-selling works of biography and history. Following his success Sir Walter Ralegh (Phoenix Press) Robert Lacey wrote Majesty. Published on the occasion of the Queen's Silver Jubilee in 1977, it is the definitive study of the British monarchy, on which subject Lacey continues to lecture around the world. Winning renown for his original and painstaking research, Robert Lacey has gone on to write authoritative and successful works on Saudi Arabia, the Ford family, the gangster 'Little Man' Meyer Lansky, Princess Grace of Monaco and Sothebys. He also wrote and presented the BBC television series Aristocrats. Most recently his fascinating description of life at the turn of the first millennium in The Year 1000 has been a best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic.

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Phoenix Press (June 30, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1842120891
• ISBN-13: 978-1842120897
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,579,970 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

The Queen - A Life in Brief.

I have been writing about the Queen now for nearly forty years, and this little book is intended to distil and re-shape what I've learned into one pleasant afternoon's reading - a summary of its predecessors Majesty (1977) and Monarch (2002, Royal in the UK), with further research and thoughts on Elizabeth II in the year of her Diamond Jubilee.

'Lege feliciter', as the Venerable Bede used to say - May you read happily!

- Robert Lacey, January 2012 - http://robertlacey.com

Robert Lacey is an historian and biographer whose research has taken him from the Middle East ("The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Saud") to America's Mid-West ("Ford: the Men and the Machine"). "Majesty", his pioneering biography of Queen Elizabeth II, is the definitive study of British monarchy - a subject on which Robert lectures around the world, appearing regularly on ABC's Good Morning America and on CNN's Larry King Live.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Amazing, October 11, 2001

By 

M. Dowd - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sir Walter Ralegh (Phoenix Press) (Paperback)

I had always loved Ralegh's poetry, I fell enamored of the fictional account of his life entitled "Death of a Fox" by George Garrett some 30 odd years ago, but had never really comprehended the sweep of Ralegh's life. In his own way, according to Lacey, Ralegh's household became almost the equivalent of our Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Draper Labs, or even NASA. The story about the cloak and Elizabeth is true, but the depth of his love for his wife was new to me.

Fascinating, well-written book. Truly fascinating man.

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant summary of the archetypal renaissance man., August 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Sir Walter Raleigh (Hardcover)

To write a biography of a man with as much vitality and variety as Ralegh would seem at first sight a daunting task for any author: however well the tale is told, it will pale beside the real life exploits of this, the most remarkable of Englishmen.

The success of Robert Lacey's account is largely due to the way he reflects the multifaceted nature of his subject in the book's structure. There are some 50 chapters, divided into seven sections, each charting the ups and downs of Ralegh's uniquely chequered career. From country upstart to royal favourite, from privateer to traitor in the Tower, his life was never still - a continuum of change within a world that was constantly reassessing itself.

It is above all an account of a man who was almost uniquely human: capable of immense bravery and ingenuity, creativity and arrogance, one moment acquitting himself with a rare brilliance, the next with sublime recklessness. Ralegh was the epitome of man, warts and all, and a man who struggled daily to achieve ends that were destined to lie forever beyond him, whether they were glories of the gold of El Dorado or the love of his virgin Queen.

Far from being a trip down the honeysuckled lane of nostalgia, this is a book that is uniquely relevant to the present day. Many readers will be aware of the legends of Ralegh's bejewelled cloak, or acquainted with verses of his gilded poetry; many more will be surprised to learn that he was the founding father of the British colony, and that his experiments in Munster, Virginia and Guyana led directly to the vast empire that was only a couple of centuries later to cover one third of the globe. Yet he was in his explorations and expeditions a great philanthropist, and his treatment of the local inhabitants in the Americas was to earn him a respect that lasted many generations, as opposed to the legacy of mistrust and hatred that the Spanish pioneers engendered.

Ralegh was a man whose talents and faults, when fuelled by his rare energy, shone like beacons. He lived the kind of life that most of us only dream of, and few can live up to. Lacey's greatest achievement is never to lapse into the kind of starry-eyed hero-worshipping that often accompanies biographies of remarkable men. It is a profoundly moving book, particularly in its final chapters, when the voice of Ralegh in his final speech before his execution is allowed to resonate down the years with few embellishments and, as such, is all the more powerful. The book is a testament to the unique powers of one man: the man, to the powers that lie within us all.