Victor Allan

Gregor MacGregor, the Prince of Poyais

Like a herald of lost Atlantis, Gregor MacGregor arrived in 19th-century London with news of a Central American utopia. Unfortunately, Poyais didn’t exist and its would-be emigrants found only a ‘sinister coast of disillusion’.

A Journey to Lhasa in 1811

Victor Allan describes the Cambridge tutor in mathematics, friend of Charles Lamb, who became the first Englishman to walk the streets of the Tibetan capital.