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Pirates and Privateers

Tom Bowling

Publication: January 2008
Extent: 160 pp
Format: Crown Octavo (186 X 124mm)
Price: 9.99
ISBN: 9781842432310
EAN: 9781842432310
13 Digit ISBN: 978-1-84243-231-0
Binding: hardback
Market: History
Rights: World
BIC Code:

  • With the success of Pirates of the Caribbean the mythic figure of the pirate has been embraced by a whole new generation
  • Perfect pocket-sized guide to the history of the subject

From Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island to Errol Flynn in Captain Blood on to today’s Pirates of the Caribbean, the romantic image of pirates in modern Western popular culture has long been with us. But of course pirates come in many guises, and not all of them as charming as Johnny Depp.

Pirates are outlaws who move quickly, a form of lawlessness based on the application of immense short term power by mobile forces which fade away, similar to guerrilla warfare.

In Pirates and Privateers Tom Bowling offers a lively history of piracy, from ancient times through the ‘privateers’ such as Morgan, with their Letters of Marque (an early example of State-sponsored terrorism), to the still real and flourishing threat of contemporary pirates that patrol the less well-regulated shipping lanes of the world today.


Tom Bowling is a Londoner born into a seafaring family in the Neckinger, a part of Bermondsey allegedly named after the Devil’s Neckinger or noose worn by pirates executed there. He is the author of the Pocket Essential Pirates and Privateers and is currently working on the second book featuring Jean Cotterell, A Ship Aground.

For a review copy or further information, please contact Chris Burrows PR
on 0161 445 6635 or email chris-burrows@o2.co.uk

Distribution UK: Turnaround, 3 Olympia Trading Estate, Coburg Rd, London N22 6TZ.
Pocket Essentials, PO Box 394, Harpenden, Herts, AL5 1XJ
Tel/Fax 01582 761264         http://www.pocketessentials.co.uk