Hunter Davies sought to make sense of the miasma of contradictory statements that have been made about Columbus. He studied the Archives of the Indies in Spain, and Columbus family documents in Italy. From this research, he produced a biography of Columbus, which appears in chapters alternating with an account of his own present-day journey in his predecessor's steps. In Haiti he tracked down the exact location at which the "Santa Maria" was shipwrecked and the first settlement established in the New World. He went to the Bahamas, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela - and many other places. Hunter Davies is the author of over 30 books which range from travel books about Hadrian's Wall, the Lake District and the Grand Tour, to biographies of William Wordsworth, the Beatles, Beatrix Potter and George Stephenson.