I have loved history since I was young and grew to love writing and telling a story. I am grateful to the history department at Oriel College, Oxford, and to my D. Phil supervisor, Dr Mark Almond, for instilling a conviction that the first duty of historical writing is to be a pleasure to read. I hope that I have succeeded.
Subsequently, making historical documentaries for television, I have jumped between periods and subjects, in search of a good story, and particularly of one illustrating a wider point. It was while working with one master of popular (as well as good) history, Niall Ferguson, that I first read about the voyage made by Sir Hugh Willoughby and Richard Chancellor in 1553. I looked for the popular account of what seemed at once an extraordinary story, the perfect illustration of an important, wider change, and one served unusually well by the documents which survived. When I realised, to my surprise, that there wasn’t one, I resolved to try to write it. I am grateful to James Runcie for his firm insistence at the time that I should do so.
I am lucky to live close to both the British Library and to the London Library. Both are marvellous institutions, as all who use them know, and I could not have written this book without them. Through them I have acquired debts to other authors too numerous to mention – though repeated reference to them will be found in my notes and bibliography. I would, however, like to pay particular tribute to the work of T.S. Willan and E.G.R. Taylor as well as, more fundamentally still, to the sixteenth-century editor Richard Hakluyt, without whom this story, like many others, could simply not be told in the same way.
My thanks are due to Lord Middleton for permission to photograph the family portrait of Sir Hugh, to Lady Cara Willoughby for her help in doing so, and to Richard Flint, who did the photography. For the portrait of Robert Thorne, I am grateful to Nicola Pearce, the assistant archivist at Bristol Grammar School, for photographing it, as well as to Anne Bradley, the archivist, and Pete Jakobek, the assistant head, for their help.
On the map on p. x I have used and gratefully acknowledge the course of the Bona Esperanza and the Bona Confidentia, approximately plotted by Kit Mayers, an experienced sailor, on p. 65 of his book North-East Passage to Muscovy.
Professor David Loades has provided invaluable help simply through his prolific study of Tudor politics and maritime life, but he also read this book in manuscript, providing very useful feedback and pointing out some factual inaccuracies. Any errors that remain are of course my own.
I owe enormous thanks to my publisher, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, for their enthusiasm and support, and particularly to my wonderful editor, Bea Hemming, who has improved my initial efforts dramatically by deft questions and suggestions. I am very grateful to my copy editor, Linden Lawson. And I owe a great deal too to my agent, Ben Mason, who believed in me and took me on, and who showed me the way to turn an idea into reality. Jo Cantello read a draft proposal early on, introduced me to Ben, and has been so supportive and encouraging throughout.
Deep thanks are due to both of my parents, for their endless love and support, and to my father, in particular, for reading and commenting on these chapters in their first draft. My small children, Thea and Guy, have provided very welcome love and distraction. Last and anything but least, my largest debt is to my wife Nicola, who has read chapters, put up with countless weekends of solitary childcare and remained enormously loving, patient and supportive, about a book she had every right to resent. I am more grateful than I can say.