The tragedy of Sir Walter Ralegh’s impossible quest
I remember little of my two years at boarding school, where I arrived aged eight, apart from the cloaks. Red, green, blue and yellow, for the houses of Ralegh, Nicholson, Gordon and Wellesley. They were called after generals, we were told, and of the four, Ralegh’s name is the best known. But why? I take a short survey of my colleagues. They all know the name but not why they know it. It is a curious fame to have, and perhaps David Gibbins’s book will do something to give it substance. Sir Walter Ralegh (Gibbins’s choice of spelling, as opposed to Raleigh, Rawleigh, Ralley and other versions in the elastic Elizabethan way with names) was more than a military commander.
