Daily Archives: May 4, 2017


In 1822, Gregor MacGregor committed what The Economist newspaper has called the ‘biggest fraud in history’ and ‘the greatest confidence trick of all time’. Investors, many of them Scottish, put forward vast sums towards creating a colony in central America. They were told it was a sure bet, a land of milk and honey – another paradise on the isthmus. Sounds familiar? If you listened last […]

The Prince of Poyais – settling in the country that never was