Will Adams: Sailor, Adventurer, Lover, Bold Englishman, Brave Samurai...

Leaving Elizabethan Kent in search of adventure, Will Adams took a voyage through Indonesia. Sailing as pilot of five small trading ships on a twenty-one months' voyage to the fabled Spice Islands of Java and Sumatra, Will survived disaster to reach seventeenth-century Japan. Not only was he the first Englishman to set foot in Japan, but he also became the lifelong protégé and friend of the reigning Shogun, Iyeyasu.

Japan was a land of fierce, proud men and delicate, beautiful women, where danger came cloaked in strange custom. A culture so different in their thoughts, beliefs and traditions that his life was constantly at stake, yet through Will's stature and intelligence he survived the many plots of his enemies and lived to become a Samurai, one of the Lords of Japan. Feared, respected, loved, and hated...

By his prowess and wise counsel, Will also opened the way to Japan's first contacts with the learning and culture of the West. He brought the majesty of England to the other end of the earth and found a civilisation more enticing and a land of passions more powerful, than any he had ever known...

Born in 1930, Christopher Nicole spent his early years in British Guyana and the West Indies — years that would later strongly influence much of his writing. He has written under a number of pseudonyms and many of his fifty novels are historical with a West Indian background.