Tim Severin Books in Order

As an Oxford student, Severin set off by motorcycle to follow Marco Polo across Asia and see how much of the old account still held up on the ground. The result is youthful, funny, and already full of his taste for testing history.

From conquistadors to nineteenth-century adventurers, Severin follows the people who tried to map, use, and master the Mississippi. The river itself is the constant force, shaping every success, mistake, and near disaster.

Severin recounts the English and Scottish chase for wealth and footholds in the Caribbean, from Ralegh to Darien. It is a big, dramatic history of ambition, illusion, and repeated disaster in the shadow of the Spanish empire.

Severin looks at ten traditional societies and at the first encounters that brought them into the written record. The book mixes exploration history with anthropology and asks what is lost when isolated ways of life disappear.

This is Severin's wide-ranging look at the European travelers who pushed east into Asia over many centuries. It is less about conquest than curiosity, trade, and the ways outsiders tried to understand the lands beyond them.

Severin and his crew build a leather boat using early medieval methods and sail from Ireland to Newfoundland to test Saint Brendan's legend. It is one of his signature books, equal parts experiment, travel narrative, and cold-ocean survival story.

To test the old tales of Sindbad, Severin had a traditional Arab trading ship built without nails and sailed it from Oman to China. The result is a vivid sea story packed with research, hardship, and wonder.

Could Jason's trip to Colchis have been real enough to begin as history? Severin builds a Bronze Age galley and rows the route himself, turning a famous myth into a gripping test of boats, currents, and endurance.

Using the same galley from his Jason expedition, Severin follows the route home from Troy to Ithaca to see what may lie behind Homer's story. It is a smart blend of seamanship, scholarship, and adventurous guesswork.

Severin retraces the First Crusade on horseback, following the route from Belgium to Jerusalem with remarkable practical attention to terrain, distance, and daily survival. The book turns medieval history into something physical and immediate.

Riding with Mongol companions across remote country, Severin traces old courier routes and explores how Genghis Khan still lived in memory and ritual. It is part horseback journey, part history lesson, and part portrait of a changing Mongolia.

Severin and his crew set out from Vietnam on a bamboo raft to test whether ancient Asian mariners could have reached the Americas. Storms, cramped living, police attention, and pirates make the experiment feel very real.

Using Alfred Russel Wallace as a guide, Severin sails into the Indonesian archipelago in search of the landscapes and wildlife that shaped a great scientific mind. Travel writing, natural history, and biography come together neatly here.

Who was the real Robinson Crusoe? Severin follows castaway stories from Juan Fernandez to Panama and the Venezuelan coast, testing rival claims and turning a familiar classic into a lively travel investigation.

Severin travels through Pacific whaling cultures to ask whether Melville's white whale had real roots. Part literary detective story and part travel book, it is full of living traditions, sea lore, and sharp historical curiosity.

Thorgils serves in the Varangian Guard at Constantinople and later carries a secret mission tied to Harald Sigurdsson's plans for England. The trilogy closes with imperial intrigue, hard campaigning, and the looming disaster of 1066.

Thorgils Leiffson grows up restless and half rootless in the Viking world of Greenland, heir to second sight and drawn toward danger. This opening novel follows his early trials through battle, shipwreck, and the struggle between old gods and new faith.

Now in Knut's England, Thorgils is caught in a dangerous love affair and then bound to the outlaw Grettir as a sworn brother. The second Viking novel pushes him toward exile, hard choices, and the road to Byzantium.

Kidnapped from an Irish village by Barbary corsairs, seventeen-year-old Hector Lynch is sold into slavery in Algiers and thrown into a brutal new world. His only chance is to adapt fast, keep his wits, and keep searching for his missing sister.

In the Caribbean, Hector Lynch is mistaken for the governor's nephew and uses the confusion to save his friends, only to make deadly enemies. Soon he is entangled with Sir Henry Morgan, jungle raids, and the ruthless politics of buccaneers.

Forced to navigate a vicious crew around Cape Horn, Hector Lynch follows a fragile clue that Maria is alive on the far side of the Pacific. The journey is harsh, wide-ranging, and full of strange new dangers.

After his family is destroyed, the young Saxon prince Sigwulf is exiled to the court of Carolus and pulled into a world of prophecy, ambition, and betrayal. A mission to Muslim Spain forces him to choose where his loyalty really lies.

Sigwulf is sent to gather rare white animals for a diplomatic mission from Carolus to the Caliph of Baghdad. What starts as an odd royal errand turns into a long, perilous journey through sabotage, politics, and unfamiliar lands.

Hector Lynch wants to leave piracy behind, but a wreck, a Spanish ship, and the mercenary Laurens de Graff drag him back into danger. Marooned, hunted, and separated from Maria, he has to fight his way toward Port Royal.

Rome, 799. When Pope Leo is attacked in the street, Sigwulf is sent to uncover the plot and finds church politics, noble grudges, and a dangerous trail leading east. A tight historical mystery with plenty of movement.

Hector Lynch reaches Madagascar searching for Libertalia and a safe future with Maria, only to be drawn into Henry Avery's hunt for a fabulously rich Mughal prize. The final Hector Lynch novel mixes longing for home with one last huge gamble.

Severin surveys four centuries of African exploration, from early legends and Portuguese ventures to Burton, Speke, Livingstone, and Stanley. It is a brisk history of ambition, danger, and the motives that drove outsiders into the continent's interior.