Drake : The Life and Legend of an Elizabethan Hero - Softcover

Coote, Stephen

3.36

42 ratings by Goodreads

9780743468701: Drake : The Life and Legend of an Elizabethan Hero

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743468708 ISBN 13: 9780743468701

Publisher: Gardners Books, 2005

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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.

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From the Inside Flap:

"Fascinating... reads almost as a novel... presents a vivid picture of this legendary but flawed hero."
-- History Today on Drake

“Coote brings to life the Restoration and the sly lascivious king who personified it...Coote strikes gold.”
-- Kirkus Review (starred) on Royal Survivor: The Life of Charles II"

As Royal Survivor, Coote's entertaining gallop through [Charles II's] life, reminds us, Charles's talents would shine even today...."
--Washington Post Book world on Royal Survivor, Life of Charles II

"[Coote] understands that popular biography is supposed to tell a story" --Sunday Times (UK) on W.B. Yeats: A Life

"Coote brings off Pepys's turbulent life colorfully and with sympathy. ... No academic read, Samuel Pepys will appeal to a broad, and broad-minded, audience." --Publishers Weekly on Samuel Pepys: A Life

"This is a splendid and stirring story, vividly written." --Contemporary Review on A Play of Passion: The Life of Sir Walter Raleigh

About the Author:

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.'

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