Successive Journeys: A Family in Four Continents

This is the story of an extraordinary family told by a former foreign correspondent of The Times. Meet:

• an arms smuggler in Paraguay
  
• an actor who drank 93 half-pints of ale a day
  
• an Irishman who died riding across the Rio Cobre for a bet
  
• a woman who drank too much gin before losing the Wimbledon final
  
• a London merchant arrested on suspicion of high treason
  
• a tenor who sang at four coronations
  
• a mother who bore 18 children in 22 years
  
• a surgeon who cut off his patient’s rotted toes with a pair of scissors
  
• a diamond merchant in 1777 worth the equivalent of £72m now
  
• a man who saved the Bank of England’s gold reserves
  
• a surgeon in the British Army’s most obscure campaign
  
• a Bimbashi in the Egyptian Coastguard Service
  
• a champion of the Ranee of Nagpore
  
• a man who taught a president and a king
  
• a woman who kept hard-boiled eggs and cream in her handbag
  
• an engineer who built 110 Jamaican bridges