It is no great secret that what I most want to do in life is write history books. I've written about Richard the Lionheart's journey in disguise, about the strange hidden history of money, and I'm finishing a short ebook about the submarine passage of the Dardanelles in 1915.Where someone like me can find a new angle on old stories, it seems to me, is by putting familiar stories in context. When I published a book about the 'discovery' of America in the USA five years ago, that's what I did.
Who remembers, after all, that Columbus, Cabot and Vespucci were making their amazing voyages during the hegemony of the Borgias, while Leonardo and Michelangelo were at their height (Leonardo knew both Vespucci and Cabot), and during the brief reign of Savonarola - not to mention the rebellion of Perkin Warbeck, which nearly prevented Cabot's voyage in the first place.
When you do that, you find that the three great explorers all knew each other and were deeply involved in each other's lives. It may be that Cabot began by working with the Columbus brothers. We don't know.
But I'm glad to say that my book Toward the Setting Sun: Columbus, Cabot, Vespucci and the Race for America is now available in the UK as an ebook published by Endeavour Press.
In fact, for the next three days, the ebook is downloadable for free from this link:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Toward-Setting-Sun-Columbus-ebook/dp/B00CP6VL2S/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370942809&sr=1-2&keywords=boyle+toward+setting+sun