Peter Moore: A Dangerous Game
4pm Saturday 24 October, at the Poly
In 1826, Thomas Cochrane – naval hero, political radical and inspiration for Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey – called at Falmouth aboard the Unicorn, bound for the Mediterranean and another characteristically audacious adventure. Already a celebrated naval commander, disgraced politician and convicted fraudster, he was preparing to throw himself into the Greek struggle for independence.
Cochrane’s life was more extraordinary than the fiction it inspired. A daring hero of the Napoleonic Wars, he became renowned for attacks of astonishing ingenuity and nerve, most famously his explosive assault on the French fleet at the Basque Roads. On land, he was an outspoken radical MP whose career was almost destroyed by his conviction for Stock Exchange fraud. After escaping from prison, he reinvented himself as a revolutionary admiral, helping Chile, Peru, Brazil and Greece challenge imperial rule.
Yet behind the legend was a complicated, combative and frequently self-destructive man who seemed incapable of living cautiously.
In a town whose harbour once connected Britain with the wider maritime world through which Cochrane sailed and fought, bestselling historian Peter Moore tells the astonishing story of a man who played every part of his life as a dangerous game.
I could only wish Patrick O’Brian was alive to have read this
– NIKOLAI TOLSTOY
The brilliant, dashing, outrageous Thomas Cochrane, who inspired so many works of thrilling fiction, has received a fitting tribute; Peter Moore’s A Dangerous Game unfolds the events of this amazing life with a verve worthy of the man.
– CAROLINE ALEXANDER, author of The Endurance and The Bounty
A master historian and storyteller meets a truly extraordinary subject. The result is history that explodes off the page.
— MATTHEW PARKER, author of One Fine Day
About Peter Moore
Author of A Dangerous Game
Peter Moore is a writer, historian and journalist, and a tutor in creative writing at the University of Oxford. He is the author of five works of history, including the Sunday Times bestsellers The Weather Experiment and Endeavour. His other books include Damn His Blood and Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. His latest, A Dangerous Game, is a new biography of the naval hero and political radical Thomas Cochrane.
