In the early seventeenth century, Thomas Coryate, an eccentric Englishman, a writer and a wanderer, decided to walk from his village of Odcombe in Somerset of the Indies—to the court of the Great Mogul, Jehangir, and onwards to Chin, the land from where the silks came. His search was for fame, not fortune: he wanted to be the first man to write about those distant lands. Above all, he wanted to prove himself—to his many sceptics in Prince Henry’s court, ...
