Felipe Fernandez-Armesto was born in London in 1950. His books include The Times Atlas of World Exploration, Columbus, Edward Gibbon's Atlas of the World, Barcelona: a Thousand Years of the City's Past, Millennium and Truth. Translations of his work have appeared in twenty languages and he has been shortlisted for numerous prizes. Fernandez-Armesto is Professor of Global Environmental History at Queen Mary, University of London, and has been a member of the Faculty of Modern History at Oxford University since 1983. From September 2005 he has been Principe de Asturias Chair in Spanish Culture and Civilization at Tufts University. He lives in Oxford
'Filled with marvels and sensations rich in description and replete with anecdote ... A compendium of delights' Peter Ackroyd, The Times 'Fernandez-Armesto's chapters on the western Mediterranean are models of how to write popular history: accessible, provocative and full of telling detail' **** Mail on Sunday 'Fernandez-Armesto's rich vision of the 1490s is unlike any other world historians have given us. He has performed an amazing feat of portraying the world as one place before it had yet become one place ... This is popular history at its best: grounded in research, insightfully critical, and written with grace' Literary Review 'Engrossing' Daily Telegraph