Edward Blaquiere (1779–1832), an Irishman of Huguenot descent, joined the Royal Navy in 1794 and served, chiefly in the Mediterranean, throughout the Napoleonic wars. In 1820, influenced by Jeremy Bentham, he went on his behalf to Spain to observe the revolution there. On the fall of the liberal regime in Spain in 1823, Blaquiere and his friend John Bowring formed the London Greek Committee to raise money for the Greek war of independence and to lobby the British government for support. (It was under the auspices of the Committee, and recruited by Blaquiere, that Lord Byron made his famous, and fatal, journey to Greece.) Blaquiere published this book in 1824, emphasising his credentials as an eyewitness of events. An account of his second visit in 1824 is also reissued in this series, and the two works describe both events in Greece and the internal quarrels among its philhellene supporters.