Felipe Fernadez-Armesto on Straits: Beyond the Myth of Magellan. Friday 6 June at 7:30pm – FRIENDS TICKET

For centuries, Ferdinand Magellan has been celebrated as a hero: a noble adventurer who circumnavigated the globe in an extraordinary feat of human bravery; a paragon of daring and chivalry. In his book Straits, Felipe turns that belief on its head; instead offering up a stranger, darker and even more compelling narrative than the fictional version that has been glorified for half a millennium. Straits untangles the myths that made Magellan a hero.

Drawing on extensive and meticulous research into Magellan’s life, his character and his ill-fated voyage, Filipe will prove that Magellan did not attempt – much less accomplish – a journey around the globe; and that in his own lifetime, the explorer was abhorred as a traitor, reviled as a tyrant and dismissed as a failure.