Giles Milton

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Giles Milton is a British writer and journalist born in Buckinghamshire in 1966.

He has contributed articles for most of the British national newspapers as well as many foreign publications, and specialises in the history of travel and exploration. In the course of his researches, he has travelled extensively in Europe, the Middle East, Japan and the Far East, and the Americas.

His books include:

• The Riddle and the Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville
• Nathaniel's Nutmeg: How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History (1999)
• Big Chief Elizabeth: How England's Adventurers Gambled and Won the New World
• Samurai William: The Adventurer Who Unlocked Japan (a biography of William Adams, the first Briton to reach Japan)
• White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa's One Million European Slaves
• Edward Trencom's Nose:A Novel of History,Dark Intrigue, and Cheese (ISBN: 031236217X, (c) 2007)

[edit] The Riddle and the Knight

The Riddle and the Knight is a combination history and travel book. Milton intermingles the history of Sir John Mandeville's time and his account of his travel from England to Asia and back before writing his famous book Travels or The Travels of John Mandeville. Mandeville, according to Milton, is often considered a fraud and an opportunist. Critics of Mandeville say that he created his entire tale. There is some legitimacy since some of Mandeville's descriptions are of men that hop around on one leg or a culture of persons with deformed genitalia. Milton does not refute that Mandeville embellished at some points--particularly when Mandeville claims to have met Prester John, a white Christian leader who had been rumored to be in Asia years before Europeans are known to have arrived in Asia.

Milton travels across England for elusive knowledge about Mandeville and then follows the knight on his journey to the Middle East. Constantinople and parts of Turkey are particularly interesting when Milton uncovers very subtle but specific details that Mandeville described in the 14th century still hidden in the cities and deserts today.

Milton concludes that perhaps Mandeville was a liar and embellisher at times, but it does not appear that all of his Travels are a fiction. Regardless Milton decides that there are cultural lessons to be learned from Mandeville's work and at the very least he should not be derided for the very things that our heroes of his era were also doing.

[edit] Nathaniel's Nutmeg

Nathaniel's Nutmeg provides an entertaining account of the Spice Wars going on in the 1600s. Most of the conflict was between the Dutch and the English, as the Dutch attempted to control the world's production of Nutmeg. The hero of the story, Nathaniel Courthope, was able to withstand Dutch aggression against the small island of Run for many years before he was betrayed and murdered. Although the island was lost, it set up a future exchange wherein England received New Amsterdam, later known as New York, in exchange for Run.