Lecturer: Enrique Rodriguezwas born in Bogota (Colombia) on 6th June 1962 and was educated in the United Kingdom, where he obtained Engineering degrees from the Universities of Hertfordshire and Birmingham. He has lived in Switzerland since 1987 where he has occupied several positions in the fields of Manufacturing Systems Engineering and Information Technology. He admits to having read technical subjects for purely mercenary reasons ("they get you jobs which pay for the really interesting things in life"). He has always had a "double life" and has been a voracious reader of history and international affairs since childhood. He has put this hobby to good use and between 1980 and 1991 was the European correspondent of "El Siglo", a Bogota newspaper. Based first in England and later in Switzerland, he published more than 250 articles in his column. During this period, he was an Associate Member of the London Foreign Press Association. In 2006, he published "Freedom's Mercenaries" (2 volumes, 950 pages) in which he tells the story of the thousands of foreign volunteers (mainly British and Irish) who fought in the Wars of Independence of Latin America (1810-1825). In 2009 he published "Under the Flags of Freedom" (533 pages), in which he deals with the British and Irish volunteers in the Portuguese War of the Two Brothers, the First Carlist War in Spain, and the Greek War of Independence (1821-1840). He became interested in Irish history while researching his first book ... since more than half of the so-called "British volunteers" came from Ireland. This interest led him to join our Society and he has taken part in two of its foreign tours and several online lectures. He is the proud owner of a complete set of "The Irish Sword" (yes, from Issue 1!). He "encountered" Sir Richard Church, the subject of our lecture, while researching his second book. For many years, he has been researching a third book, but he still has a long way to go: "The Wild Geese: Irish Mercenaries and their descendants in the Armies of continental Europe (1587-1818)"