A Most Unsettled Man
By Lily Style
By Lily Style
Publication Date: 23rd July 2024
Publisher: Historium Press
Pages: 362 Pages
Genre: Historical Biography
George Matcham, dubbed the most unsettled man alive, was born in East India Company controlled Bombay and undertook three epic overland treks between Asia and England before marrying the favourite sister of the not yet famous Horatio Nelson. Intimate details about George's life have been preserved because of his close relationship with Nelson and his famous paramour Emma Hamilton, whose rises and falls he observed first-hand.
Packed with period press clippings and eyewitness accounts, A Most Unsettled Man provides an unprecedented glimpse into the private life of a modest 18th century English gentleman, as well retelling the enduring love story of Nelson and Emma from an entirely new perspective.
Excerpt
George –accompanied by unnamed friends– had no post-chaise and, likely, few pairs of silk stockings stowed in his baggage, for he travelled light, with only a small Persian rug to sleep on.
It surely must have been worrying to traverse the Middle Eastern desert in full awareness of how murderously brutal the Arabs could be to English travellers, but George pressed ever onwards, seemingly undaunted.
He noted in his journal that he was “compelled to ride on untam’d horses at a rate of sixty or seventy miles aday, sometimes exposed to a burning sun”. With inland temperatures on the Arabian peninsula reaching over 40°C/105°F, the near-thousand-mile crossing would have taxed anyone, let alone an inexperienced, single-lunged traveler whose doctor thought him already as good as dead.
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Lily Style
Lily Style is the direct descendant of famed lovers Admiral Lord Nelson and Emma Hamilton and also Nelson's sister, Kitty Matcham (because their grandchildren married).
Lily is the founder of Emma Hamilton Society and writes regularly for Nelson-related publications. She is also a keen genealogist with an interest in piecing together real human stories lying behind dry facts.
One of these stories is of her 4th great-grandfather, George Matcham, whose story she's traced from his mid eighteenth-century birth in East India Company controlled Bombay through to his intimate involvement with Nelson and Emma's rise and fall.
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Thank you so much for hosting Lily Style today, sharing her fabulous new book, A Most Unsettled Man.
ReplyDeleteTake care,
Cathie xx
The Coffee Pot Book Club