Henry the Navigator and his World

Imogen Corrigan

Imogen Corrigan lectures for Martin Randall Travel, ACE Cultural Tours and other specialist travel companies leading tours in Britain, Europe and the Far East. She is a NADFAS lecturer as well as being a highly regarded speaker for the U3A, Kent Federation of History, and East Kent National Trust amongst other organisations. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a member of the British Commission for Military History and has been admitted as a Freeman of the London Company of Communicators. Her first book, Stone on Stone: the Men who built the Cathedrals was published in 2019.

About the event

The world he lived in was Portugal, the world in his imagination was limitless. At the end of the fourteenth century, when Prince Henry was born, Portugal was a small country, only recently independent from Castile. By the time he died, 64 years later, Portugal was a player on the international stage, opening up new trade routes and discovering lands on an unprecedented scale. And yet he himself never accompanied any of the expeditions and lived in monk-like conditions at Sagres, the far south-western point of Portugal.

Religion ruled his life, yet he would have no truck with superstition. He insisted that his commanders overcame their fears of boiling seas and the edge of the world to find more and more new lands and he gave them the tools to do the job: under his guidance better charts, equipment and boats were developed. Under his guidance too, the slave trade erupted onto the European stage.

Venues

Click on the three markers with an "X" to get directions to that venue from Google. Further information about Augustine House can be found on our University Maps and Travel pages. There is also an interactive map of Augustine House