He was a Victorian force of nature; a devil-driven, raging-to-live legend in his own time. Richard Francis Burton wrote The Book of the Sword and translated the--Arabic--Book of Love. He was an anthropologist, an archaeologist, a geographer, a linguist, a poet, a mystic, a spy and a sexologist. Withal and besides, RBF still found time to be the best horseman, swordsman and pistol-shot in the British Army...when he wasn't romancing the ladies and infuriating polite society.