William Dampier Author

William Dampier (c.1651-1715) was a pirate and adventurer who was (albeit for chaotic and unintended reasons) the first man to voyage round the world three times. A New Voyage Round the World (1697), written from notes kept during his first voyage, was a literary sensation (inspiring Gulliver's Travels) and the model for all the great British naturalists and explorers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Nicholas Thomas has been Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge since 2006. He has worked in archives and collections in Europe, North America, New Zealand and the Pacific. His books include Discoveries: The Voyages of Captain Cook (2003), and Islanders: the Pacific in the Age of Empire (2010), which was awarded the Wolfson History Prize.