Sir Hans Sloane: Collector, Scientist, Antiquary

Ed Arthur MacGregor British Museum Press, pounds sterling50, pp 308 ISBN 0 7141 2085 5

There has been no full length and comprehensive biography of Sir Hans Sloane. Perhaps the task is too formidable for a single person. He lived, after all, to the age of 92, so that, being born in the year of the Restoration, he did not die until the later years of the reign of George II. He first established himself with his Voyage to the Island Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica…with the natural history of the…last of those islands…, derived from his journey to the Caribbean with the Duke of Albermarle between 1687 and 1689. Later he was to become not only president of the Royal Society after Sir Isaac Newton for …