That the “best hated man” in England managed to become one of the fathers of the British Empire may seem one the many ironies of history. Sir Walter Ralegh (1554–1618), however, was probably just destined to elicit controversy.

Notwithstanding its title, in Walter Ralegh: Architect of Empire, Alan Gallay takes into consideration much more than Ralegh's role as an “architect of empire,” exploring—in some five hundred pages—the many facets of his character and his time. Gallay takes his cue from the inventory of Ralegh's pockets on the day of his execution (which he reprints from Edward Edwards's celebrated nineteenth-century biography, here misquoted, alas, as being by “Edward Everett”). The items in this list are shown to be “reflective of his life as the foremost English Colonizer of the sixteenth century” (2). Accordingly, part one (chapters 1–3) provides background on the English “plantations” in Ireland and the transoceanic colonizing attempts from Anglo-Norman times to the reign of Elizabeth I. This section provides much useful information on explorers and privateers, such as Martin Frobisher and Humphrey Gilbert (Ralegh's half-brother), and the other men involved in England's overseas expansion, including John Dee and some of the members of his entourage.

Gilbert is very much the protagonist of part two, an interesting survey of almost all that is known about this charismatic if now almost forgotten figure. The two chapters (4–5) in this section allow readers to understand the size of Gilbert's extended family and their connections. Importantly, Gallay extends his analysis to encompass some relevant writings of the time, including George Peckam's True Report of the Newfound Landes (1583), which proves to be a crucial document for understanding the Roanoke expeditions.

Ralegh's life at court in the period immediately preceding the voyage to Virginia is the focus of the next section, two chapters (6–7) that Gallay devotes to describing what was the real center of Elizabethan political and cultural life. No matter how informative, this part contains some statements that appear to oversimplify many complex themes (this is the case of the pages that analyze the “Cult of Elizabeth”) and presents some rather puzzling affirmations. On page 97, for example, one reads that “it is probable that Ralegh introduced to court the singing of one's poetry which others then imitated, and he accompanied his singing with the lute.” In fact, there is no evidence of this either in Ralegh's oeuvre or in his biography, and the fact that some later prints and manuscripts (such as those now at Tenbury Wells) preserve a setting to music of Ralegh's poems is no cogent proof. Gallay's statement thus seems to misinterpret Steven May's in The Elizabethan Courtier Poets (2nd ed., 1999, 132): in the original the phrase refers, in fact, to Sir Edward Dyer.

The amount of the materials summarized in this part of the book, however, is certainly vast, and occasional slips are compensated for by the interesting insights that appear in part four and five (chapters 8–10 and 11–13), which explore both the beginnings of and the “cultural production” (the texts by Thomas Hariot, John White, Richard Hakluyt the younger, and Arthur Barlowe) related to the Virginia enterprise. Here in his narrative of the Roanoke enterprise, intriguingly, Gallay includes the probable fate of another, and very large, “lost colony” that is rarely remembered today: the hundreds of Indian and African slaves whom Drake had confiscated from the Spanish in various parts of their dominions, in particular Santo Dominigo and Cartagena, and who went missing long before the more famous white settlers did.

This, together with the three sections on Ralegh's feats in Ireland in the 1580s up to the end of his active commitment to the Plantation (chapters 14–16, 17–19, and 20–22), is probably the best part of the book, and it provides important details concerning his collaborators, friends, and fellow undertakers in Munster and on the economy of the area. These sections also contain an admirable summary of the existing evidence on the inhabitants of Ralegh's seignories. Gallay manages to provide useful information on both people and legends. We hear more about Thomas Hariot and John White, but also about less well-known figures, such as Henry Moyle and Patrick Fagan, who, respectively, were saved by and saved Ralegh during the Irish wars and who became important figures in the Plantation. Delightfully, we are also told about the famous 140-year-old Irish countess of Desmond (mentioned also in Ralegh's History of the World, 1614), who is seen here as a sort of “fictional projection” of the Irish resistance to the Munster Plantation.

The rest of the book surveys the other America on which Ralegh concentrated his efforts, Guyana, and the cultural perspectives and historical circumstances that contributed to shape the first and the second voyages to that country (part nine, chapters 23–27), together with the final years of imprisonment in the Tower under James I (chapters 28–32). Gallay, once again, presents an exhaustive background for the voyages, even going back to the myth of El Dorado as presented in Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo's Historia General del las Indias (1535–1547). His description of Ralegh's Discovery of Guiana (and related texts) benefits from recent scholarship, such as the brilliant edition by Joyce Lorimer (Sir Walter Ralegh's Discoverie of Guiana, 2006), but adds an interpretation of the surviving evidence of its own. Gallay states in the introduction that “Ralegh's vision was inspired by the Christian philosophy of Hermeticism” (6), and he goes back to this theme in various parts of the book, including, quite insistently, in these last chapters.

Quite apart from what one should exactly understand by this term (especially in the light of recent research such as Wouter J. Hanegraaff's important article “How Hermetic was Renaissance Hermetism?” (Aries 15, no. 2 [2015]: 179–209), one would like more evidence for such assertions, and this applies to various other statements in this book. On page 103, for example, we read that Elizabeth I “had hopes of growing old with Ralegh,” which, if proven, would be quite a discovery. More detailed footnotes and references for many of the very interesting claims made in this book would have been welcome. Discussing Barlowe's account of the recognition voyage to what would later be called Virginia, the author states that this “was made available to members of the court and other prospective investors in manuscript form before publication by Richard Hakluyt in Principal Navigations . . . It is titled ‘The Firft Voyage made to the Coaftes of America’” (493n10). If one may object to a way of transcribing long s simply wrong in paleographical terms, readers would probably like to understand which manuscript is here referred to.

In fact, unfortunately, Gallay very rarely, if at all quotes firsthand archival sources, seeming to rely instead on the summaries provided in the Calendars of State Papers and well-known published collections such as the series of Roanoke Voyages volumes gathered by “historian” David Beers Quinn (129); incidentally, and oddly for a history book, members of the profession are frequently noted as such in this monograph.

In the preface to his Raleigh and the Throckmortons (1962) A. L. Rowse wrote that Ralegh is “the most difficult of all Elizabethans to get right” (Rowse, v), and this still seems to be the case today: it would be unfair not to pay tribute to Gallay's efforts. All in all, Walter Ralegh: Architect of Empire is a very readable, instructive book that will no doubt spur readers to develop an interest in one of the most important figures of the English Renaissance. One hopes that it will get even more people to understand that—while being indeed the “best hated man” in England—Ralegh's thoughts and deeds were indeed crucial for the shaping of English history and culture.