by JOHN KEAY
The first in a new series of seven programmes with Narrator John Rowe
Philip Thicknesse was a familiar figure in the coffee-houses of 18th-century Bath. His life, however, had been truly remarkable. As a boy of 16 he had sailed for the New World and had encountered Red Indians, rattlesnakes and missionising Methodists. He was an inveterate traveller, and died, as he would have wished, on the road - en route to Paris - at the age of 73. He had written his own obituary in his memoirs, ' I Intend to die as I have lately lived - and wish I had always lived, a free citizen of the whole world, slave to no sect nor subject to any king.'
Producer
ALAN HAYDOCK