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By
08/04/2021
The story of Francis Drake is truly one of the most interesting, complex and heroic. The first English claim on what would become the United States—on the Pacific coast—is notable. Yet the events, actions and thinking of the man and his day are often lost to obscurity.
Every 10 or 20 years, a new author attempts to bring new energy and light to the subject. John Sugden, in his “Sir Francis Drake” (1990), and Harry Kelsey, in “Sir Francis Drake: The Queen’s Pirate” (1998), were the most recent. Now, longtime author Laurence Bergreen has weighed in with “Francis Drake, Elizabeth I, and the Perilous Birth of the British Empire: In Search of a Kingdom” (2021).