You know the usual blurb! Got it. Read it.

This time it’s “Read them forever ago and feeling the need to re-read.” !

 

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville

Ostensibly written by an English knight, the Travels purport to relate his experiences in the Holy Land, Egypt, India and China. Mandeville claims to have served in the Great Khan’s army, and to have travelled in ‘the lands beyond’ – countries populated by dog-headed men, cannibals, Amazons and Pygmies. Although Marco Polo’s slightly earlier narrative ultimately proved more factually accurate, Mandeville’s was widely known, used by Columbus, Leonardo da Vinci and Martin Frobisher, and inspiring writers as diverse as Swift, Defoe and Coleridge. This intriguing blend of fact, exaggeration and absurdity offers both fascinating insight into and subtle criticism of fourteenth-century conceptions of the world.

 

The Riddle and the Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville 

In 1322 Sir John Mandeville left England on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Thirty-four years later, he returned, claiming to have visited not only Jerusalem, but India, China, Java, Sumatra and Borneo as well.

His book about that voyage, THE TRAVELS, was heralded as the most important book of the Middle Ages as Mandeville claimed his voyage proved it was possible to circumnavigate the globe.
In the nineteenth century sceptics questioned his voyage, and even doubted he had left England.

The Riddle and the Knight sets out to discover whether Mandeville really could have made his voyage or whether, as is claimed, THE TRAVELS was a work of imaginative fiction.

Bestselling historian Giles Milton unearths clues about the journey and reveals that THE TRAVELS is built upon a series of riddles which have, until now, remained unsolved.

 

Phantom Islands of the Atlantic: The Legends of Seven Lands That Never Were.

An enthralling historical odyssey into the human spirit of endurance. Donald S. Johnson, who has himself sailed across the Atlantic seven times, takes us back to the early voyagers who, sailing into uncharted waters, attempted to map the seas and lands that they encountered. The result was an ocean scattered with mythical islands that never existed, but which were faithfully copied by later cartographers sometimes right into the seventeenth century. Born of fantasy, fear and superstition, they were places peopled by demons, loud with strange noises and often veiled in myth. “Phantom Islands of the Atlantic” explores the origins and legends associated with seven of these islands, in a totally absorbing piece of historical detection that relives the drama and dangers of the Age of Discovery. Lavishly illustrated with specially redrawn maps and contemporary engravings, this beautifully, evocative book is the stuff of maritime exploration, a magical journey into the unknown and the unknowable.

 

Hope this helps someone, somewhere :o)