In Search of a Kingdom: Francis Drake, Elizabeth I, and the Perilous Birth of the British Empire

Interesting

If you like short reviews: This book is very superficial and it's layout and design impractical. I cannot recommend it.If you like detailed reviews: I was convinced to buy this book by the many excellent reviews and opulent praise for the author, but ended up feeling deceived and very disappointed.Here are some examples of what made me come to this conclusion: Drake's adventures are told roughly in chronological order, unfortunately the frequent excursions for historical and political background add confusion rather than clarity. Paragraphs mix main story and context, vary significantly in length and end with no apparent regard for their content. Dates are sometimes given as day, month and year, but too often, even at the beginning of chapters, as X years/month earlier/later, forcing the reader to go back and forth through the pages, to find the reference date. The "antique" looking pages with their varying width are very unpractical and make turning a single page unnecessarily hard. Technical details on ship designs and navigation are often lacking precision (e.g. "English" miles and nautical miles are not distinguished), simply false (e.g. placing the Azores east of Dakar) or even repeated with contradictory explanations (e.g. the mizzen-mast with it's lateen sail is said to add extra manoeuvrability and then a few pages later extra speed). I often wondered how many further mistakes or inaccuracies I missed, simply because I lacked the background knowledge in that particular field. Unfortunately I could not find out, even if I wanted, since the book offers no footnotes or otherwise numbered references. Sources are only given per chapter and roughly organized by topic, even though the book is full of quotations and references to historic texts. Throughout the book additional information is given on topics that do not relate directly to the main text (e.g. a detailed description of the individual stages of hypothermia and their distinct symptoms is given, while none of the eyewitness accounts cited mention any of these symptoms being observed and the author merely speculates, that hypothermia must have been a common problem), which appeared to me simply as an attempt to impress the reader.In summary, this book is - in my opinion - light entertainment at best, favouring flashy anecdotes and outlandish seamen's stories over well researched technical information and fact based analysis of the events' historical importance. Get this book, if you need a good looking paperweight for your coffee table - if you seek knowledge beyond the most basic level I advise you seek it elsewhere!

England in the sixteenth century, Queen Elizabeth I, Francis Drake and other players, part of a burgeoning world power, a very interesting time. I’m enjoying it thoroughly.

How often chance owns destiny.Caesar throwing the dice when he crossed the Rubicon, “The die is cast,” perhaps he said and so it was, but who knew? The end of Republic, the rise of the Roman Empire follows. Could have gone the other way.Theodore Roosevelt, the one cavalry man riding a steed straight up Kettle Hill into howitzer fire, with a colorful bandana wrapped around his neck, as if to say, “Shoot me, just try it.” In that reckless throw of the dice, TR made himself into the mythical figure who would re-draft the American drama, creating a new kind of cultural, economic empire.And how about the 1588 conflict between the upstart English and the dominant Spanish Empire? According to Winston Churchill, among others, that victory of the English (not before then known as the British) birthed the British Empire. The defeat of the Spanish Armada says Laurence Bergreen was in many respects the child of an unlikely marriage (political, not conjugal - the story is not that racy) between Queen Elizabeth I and Sir Francis Drake, the richest, most influential of all the pirates to command the seas.Luck does favor the prepared, but it was the weather gods perhaps as much as any other factor that granted the English victory, says Bergreen.Laurence Bergreen’s rousing success in telling the tale, “In Search of Kingdom: Francis Drake, Elizabeth I, and the Perilous Birth of the British Empire,” on the other hand, falls more surely into the category of destiny than chance.Bergreen has written consistently well-chosen, well-researched, well-written histories and biographies on a range of subjects so broad that the unexpected must be obvious. Louis Armstrong, Al Capone, James Agee, Magellan’s ill-fated circumnavigation of the globe, Columbus, the search for life on Mars, among others. If there is a theme among Bergreen’s library of works, it must be a catholic interest in human exploration – looking in and wandering out. Each one of those that I have read has surprised, delighted, and edified.Wily, unlikely Queen Elizabeth, daughter of a woman, Anne Boleyn, who was beheaded by Anne’s husband, Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, balanced her life on a Catholic-Protestant fulcrum of angst and portentous fratricide. The British Isles and Europe would sway from war to war on that balance bar for centuries. In the low-born Drake she found a winning teammate, a robbing rascal who circumnavigated the globe stealing fortunes from and challenging the world’s then greatest and Most Catholic empire, Spain, all in the name of England. At the same time the protean Drake protected Elizabeth’s credible deniability.Shakespearean, indeed. Hard not to draw a line directly from Elizabeth’s August 1588 royal charge to her troops at Tilbury Camp - before the expected invasion (never to occur) by the Spanish - directly to Henry V’s St. Crispin’s Day speech written by the Elizabethan Bard in (perhaps) 1599.This new work of Laurence Bergreen pieces together what may be well known, but rarely so well masoned, the foundation stones of modern European history.

The basic story is interesting, more about Drake than Elizabeth. But really, it is so disjointed that it is unintelligible in spots. Just an example. The Spanish Armada anchors off Calais. Then they ride off without anchors. What happened to the anchors? Did some strange sharks that live in the English Channel chew through the ropes? No explanation from the author is provided. There's a lot of that sort of thing. Sometimes the book doubles back and explains. Most times it doesn't. Also, I was underwhelmed by sourcing. How do I know that the author isn't just making stuff up. I'd love to read a better sourced and written history on the same subject. Can't recommend this one though.