This is classic 1930's biography that, while not as scholarly as modern works breathes life into the story. It is based heavily on Trelawney's (a charasmatic braggart and truth-stretcher) autobiography. Clearly, Armstrong admired him. I loved the man as well after reading this. This is a fascinating almost unbelievable biography about Edward Trelawny. As a family the Trelawnys were always courageous, adventurous, full of vitality, eccentric, unreliable, prone to extremes - and Edward was true to the tradition. While still a very young man, sailing in he Indian Ocean under the French flag, he captured a pirate town in Madagascar. He rescued the daughter of an Arab sheik and married her, only to lose her by poisoning. He told her a story in his famous "Adventures of a Younger son."

In Italy, Trelawny's friendship with Shelley ripened into the greatest experience of his life. After Shelley's tragic death, it was Trelawny who undertook the burning of his body on the beach near Via Reggio.

Fighting, with Byron, for the freedom of Greece; living in a cave on Mount Atlas with a Greek chieftain' visiting America, where he bought a slave in order to set him free - these were some of the other highlights of his career. Hardy and handsome to the last, he died at eighty-one, and at his request his ashes were buried beside those of Shelley in Rome. Ardent alike in friendship, passion, and love of freedom, Edward Trelawny lived a life of almost incredible adventure. And his biographer brings out all of his dramatic color. Exciting reading.