The Sky Above, the Kingdom Below

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  • Author: Daniel Allen
  • Publisher: Haus Publishers Ltd
  • Catalogue: 167995
  • Size: 17x13cm
The wellspring of “The Sky Above, the Kingdom Below” is the remarkable 17th century figure, Thomas Coryate, unofficial jester to the court of King James I, associate of John Donne, Ben Johnson and Inigo Jones, and the original Jacobean grumpy old man.

Long forgotten by history at large, he is now regaining well-derserved public recognition as an eccentric wit, an idiosyncratic writer and, above all, a pioneering traveller. He was neither a diplomat nor a merchant and did not live to see any profit from the written records of his travels.

In 2004 nearly four hundred years later, Daniel Allen set out on a bicycle to retrace the path of Coryate’s final journey from Turkey to Northern India. It is a journey where everything upon the route has changed and yet somehow remained the same. Amongst the extremities of the terrain, he finds individual instances of generosity and human kindness that reflect back across the centuries to Coryate’s original journey.