John Ogilby’s life is an astonishing picaresque adventure which is so fantastic as to be unbelievable. And yet very little is known about the man himself and his legacy has faded into obscurity. Alan Ereira’s fascinating biography is about to change all that. Ogilby created himself out of nothing several times: by the lottery ticket that allowed an 11-year-old urchin to buy an apprenticeship and dance at court, by the translation that turned a 48-year-old shipwrecked prisoner into a national poet, and by the swift mastery of surveying that turned a 65-year-old homeless victim of the Great Fire into the man who was paid to map London. Perhaps best known for creating the most celebrated road atlas of England and Wales, Britannia, this apparently harmless book has been discovered to be a well-researched handbook for where to land Louis XIV’s French army of conquest in accordance with the secret treaty between him and Charles II. Alan Ereira unpicks the hidden details of this incredible man for the first time. Living through war in Europe, England and Ireland, surviving plague, fire, explosions and imprisonment - everything he did was driven by his vision of cosmic order. The Nine Lives of John Ogilby will shock, entertain and inform.




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