Willoughbyland
  • Published: 13 August 2015
  • ISBN: 9781448185252
  • Imprint: Cornerstone Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 304
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Willoughbyland

England's Lost Colony

Formats & editions
EBook
13 Aug 2015
Paperback
15 Mar 2016
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From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Goldeneye and The Sugar Barons comes Willoughbyland – the untold story of England’s lost colony: a seventeenth-century tale of empire, El Dorado and violent rebellion, of spies, trickery and forbidden love.

At the beginning of the 1650s, England was in ruins – wrecked, impoverished, grief-stricken by plague and civil war. Yet shimmering on the horizon was an intoxicating possibility, a vision of paradise: Willoughbyland.

Ambitious and free-thinking adventurers poured in, attracted by the toleration, the optimism, the rich soil and the promise of the gold of El Dorado. It was England's most hopeful colony.

But the Restoration saw the end of political freedom, and brought in its place spies, war, rebellion and treachery. The advent of racial slavery poisoned everything. What started out as a heaven was soon to become one of the cruellest places on earth.

The history of Willoughbyland is a microcosm of empire, its heady attractions and fatal dangers.
  • Published: 13 August 2015
  • ISBN: 9781448185252
  • Imprint: Cornerstone Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 304
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Matthew Parker

MATTHEW PARKER's acclaimed books include Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born – Ian Fleming’s Jamaica; Hell’s Gorge; Monte Cassino and The Sugar Barons. Born in Central America in 1970, he spent part of his childhood in the West Indies. He has written for most British newspapers, as well as History Today, BBC History Magazine and the Literary Review. He lectures around the world and contributes to television and radio programmes in the UK and America. www.matthewparker.co.uk

portrait photo of Matthew Parker

Also by Matthew Parker

Goldeneye
The Sugar Barons
Hell's Gorge
See all

Praise for Willoughbyland

An excellent account…Willoughbyland is popular history at its best.

Literary Review

Parker has trawled the letters and literature, and travelled out to Suriname, and the result is a miniature masterpiece….this is a truly extraordinary tale and, in Parker’s hands, it’s beautifully told. With great wit and scholarship he reveals — just for a moment — a cruel and curious world, before it vanishes again beneath the trees.

The Spectator

The author has written several other highly enjoyable histories of the Caribbean, and he is on fine and colourful form here.

Sunday Times

A fascinating tale…Matthew Parker is an entertaining historian who has produced a lively account.

Daily Express

[T]he long-obscure but intriguing Willoughbyland can now console itself that it has, in this frequently fascinating book, a history it deserves.

Catherine Nixey, Times

[A]n enjoyable account of a neglected moment in the emergence of the British empire.

Robert J Mayhew, BBC History Magazine

‘An excellent book throwing light on a fascinating period in history... An enjoyable read… Impeccably well-researched.’

Paul Newham, Bookbag

An odd, bygone moment in England's political dreaming, rendered expertly.

John Lewis-Stempel, Sunday Express

A fascinating tale of courage and desperation, cruelty and betrayal, and it was all sparked by the search for the legendary city of gold, El Dorado.

Event, Mail on Sunday