Conquistadors: Mad Men?
Hugh Thomas tells Paul Lay about his unparalleled research into the lives of the extraordinary generation of men who conquered the New World for Golden Age Spain.
Hugh Thomas first came to public prominence in 1961 with his acclaimed study, The Spanish Civil War. Thirty years later the former Professor of History at the University of Reading and political colleague of Margaret Thatcher produced a masterly account of a more distant though no less controversial episode in Spanish history, Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés and the Fall of Old Mexico. In 2003 came Rivers of Gold, the first in a monumental trilogy on the Spanish Empire, the second volume of which, The Golden Age: The Spanish Empire of Charles V, was published in November. No other historian has managed to portray so completely the terrible endeavours of the Conquistadors.