Book description
Discover Sir Ranulph Twistelton-Wykham-Fiennes's personal expedition to
trace his extraordinary family through history. From Charlemagne --
himself a direct ancestor of the author -- to the count who very nearly
persuaded William the Conqueror to retreat at Hastings, many members of
this unique clan have lived close to the nerve centre of the ruler of
their day. They number in their ranks a murderer, a wife poisoner, a
poacher, England's greatest female traveller of the 17th century, and an
extortionist Lord High Treasurer, teen cousins who eloped, a noble lord
hanged for manslaughter, another hanged for adultery with the King's
wife, and many who, as admirals or major-generals, won famous battles.
The Fiennes' behind Cromwell provided the castle in which the
Parliamentarians made their first secret moves, the same building in
which twenty-one successive generations of the family have lived for 600
unbroken years ...And that is just a taster. Ranulph Fiennes tells the
story of his unconventional, exceptional family, and reveals the
ingredients for the man described by the Guinness Book of Records as
'the world's greatest living explorer'.
