Shipwreck adventurer's fiction revealed as true after 270 years British writer of a stirring adventure tale is unmasked as its real hero Robin McKie Sunday October 13, 2002 The Observer An eighteenth-century adventure story involving slavery on a desert island, violent death and escape became the literary sensation of its day and has been pronounced by experts since as exciting stuff but utter fiction. Now a British archaeologist has discovered the startling truth about Robert Drury and the story of his escape from Madagascar. The experts were wrong. His fantastic, graphic tale of torture, enslavement, battles between rival tribes and...