Comyns Beaumont was the greatest iconoclast of his age: There was no idea so sacred that he dared not challenge it. He struck out at the prudery of his age and made a roaring success of The Bystanderh, he struck at the received notions of geology and meteorology putting forward his own theory of meteorism, he challenged history as it is widely believed, asserting that a great deception had been worked by Constantine the Great, he challenged William Shakespeare as the author of the plays we associate with is name, and he even challenged the virginity of the Virgin Queen! Nor were these challenges the beginning or the end of his rebellion, as his colourful and informative autobiography shows. He may have been a Rebel in Fleet Street, but he was an ardent defender of its freedom to the very end, not only that, but some of the heresies for which he was most mocked in his lifetime are mainstream views in our own time. Many haven't yet accepted Britain as Atlantis, but in time...