Richard Francis Burton – an impossible dynamo

Richard Francis Burton, the famed British explorer of Africa, Asia and the Americas was born two hundred years ago this week. He was amazingly erudite as well as scandalously fascinated by the sexual customs of the peoples he visited. He spoke 29 European, Asian, and African languages, visited Mecca when Europeans were forbidden access on pain of death; made an unexpurgated translation of One Thousand and One Nights; published the Kama Sutra in English and with John Hanning Speke visited the Gre