All that was bravest and best: William Miller, forgotten Victorian hero of South American independence
John Hemming is the doyen of historians of South America. In his previous books he has revealed the tragic history of the Incan empire (The Conquest of the Incas); the impact of the arrival of Europeans on the Brazilian Indians (Red Gold); and the story of the Amazon (Tree of Rivers). Now he has produced a biography of a modest baker’s son from Kent who became one of the greatest figures in the liberation of Spanish South America. William Miller was born in 1795, and fought as a teenager in the Peninsular War against Napoleon. Then, like many other Englishmen, he travelled to South America to fight alongside some of
