The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Daniel Defoe - Tapa dura

The life of Daniel Defoe was strange and colourful, and has baffled historians and biographers ever since. Constantly on the run from his creditors after a string of business failures, and always struggling to feed his wife and six children, he became consummate and prolific pamphleteer as well as a master of the English language in such classics as 'Robinson Crusoe' (with its claims to being the world bestseller of all time), 'Moll Flanders, Roxana' and 'A Journal of the Plague Year'.

Though his life was packed with incident and drama, he remained – even to his contemporaries – a mysterious figure who preferred to operate in the shadows. Richard West has been inspired by Defoe ever since reading 'A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain', which was based on a number of journeys Defoe made as a secret government agent.

Born in London in the year of the Restoration of the Monarchy after the English Civil War, Defoe remained a Nonconformist throughout his life, took part in a rebellion against King James II, travelled the country as a spy for Queen Anne, worked in Scotland on active behalf of the historic Union of Scotland and England, helped launch the ill-fated South Sea Company, was frequently bankrupted and imprisoned for libel and debt, and finally died a pauper in 1731.

Defoe was, above all, a compulsive writer, and Richard West's book presents him as the first great English journalist as well as novelist, with the journalist's gift for combining a sense of history with an eye for immediate detail. He was virtually the creator of the leading article, the candid obituary, the foreign news analysis, the gossip column and the advice column. He was also a scurrilous satirist. His appeal to today's readers can only be enhanced by this superbly told biography.