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Search      Gerry Adams   Ken Bruen   Paul Charles   Walter Macken   Manchán Magan   John Maher   Sam Millar   Alice Taylor Gerard Ronan   The Irish Zorro: The Extraordinary Adventures of William Lamport   Format: Hardback History/Biography   Category: Non Fiction   ISBN: 0 86322 329 X   Publication Date: Available   Description One of the most remarkable adventures ever recorded, this is the true story of a seventeenth-century Irishman who became a Mexican legend. The son of a wealthy Wexford merchant, Lamport, a child prodigy, was sent at the age of twelve to be privately educated in London. At thirteen he was arrested for treason after publishing a seditious Latin pamphlet. Following a mysterious escape he was captured by pirates, with whom he served for two years and fought for the French at the Siege of La Rochelle (1628). By twenty-five he was a protégé of Spain’s Count-Duke of Olivares, had traveled most of the continent, and boasted proficiency in fourteen languages and a curriculum vitae that included various episodes as a pamphleteer, engineer and military tactician. He may also have played a pivotal part in altering the course of European history at the Battle of Nördlingen (1634). Sent to Mexico as a spy following a scandalous affair with a young noblewoman at the Spanish court, he was arrested by the Inquisition in October of 1642 for plotting a rebellion, the stated aims of which were to introduce land reforms, abolish slavery and establish an independent Mexican state. On Christmas night 1650, he escaped in a manner so brilliantly conceived that it was quickly rumoured he had been assisted by demons. The pamphlets he posted throughout the city as he fled made him a local legend and inspired the works of several Mexican novelists and playwrights, one of which appears to have played a part in the creation of Johnston McCully’s Zorro. Other sources may have been more important in the creation of the celebrated fictional character, yet the life and adventures of this pirate, heretic and spy were stranger and more extraordinary than any fiction. Lamport’s Proclamation of Independence won for him the reputation of a forerunner of Mexican independence, and a statue commissioned in his honour currently stands in the vestibule of Mexico City’s Column of Independence. Author Gerard Ronan was born in 1959 and reared and educated in Dublin. A serving civil servant with a passion for collecting obscure adventure stories, he currently lives with his wife Cliona and daughter, Eleanor, in the village of Donabate, in north County Dublin.