Christopher Columbus / The Dream & the Obsession

Since the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Europe had been cut off from the East with its gold and precious spices. Christopher Columbus was determined to lay claim to these treasures for the glory of Spain. Convinced he could reach the East by sailing west, it was years before the sceptical Ferdinand and Isabella were persuaded to support him. His extraordinary voyage into the void, via a flotilla of three small caravels, fulfilled none of the promise of the East. Columbus refused to recognize that his dream had failed and that he had, in fact, discovered the 'New World". His disastrous administration of the new Spanish colonies and his brutality to the Indians was so outraged his Spanish masters that they brought him home in chains. "CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS" cuts through centuries of conflicting evidence about this complex and obsessive figure to give us a lively and authoritative account of his life that reads like the great adventure story it was.