William de Rumpel

And Manuela, of course, is with him that night.

And he's very sick with the fever.

He's getting that, you know, he's got tuberculosis.

He's not the man he used to be, but she loves him still.

And then they hear dogs barking and the sound of men breaking doors down.

And Bolivar grabs his pistol, he's all set, presumably in his nightgown or his towel, possibly, if he's still in his bath, to confront the intruders.

We can just see the scene, though, with his sitting up in bed with his pistol.

Is he knotting his sheets together or what's the, how's he, a bedroom window is presumably not the first law.

His faithful eunuch or his faithful unit?

Good palaces need a eunuch or two.

She's a key character.

And he's not an old man at this point.

He's ill, but he's only, what, in his late 40s.

So on the 17th of December, 1830, in the coastal town of Santa Marta, Colombia, a favourite of our producer Anushka.

Simon Bolivar dies.

He's only 47 years old.

He's politically disgraced, impoverished, far from his homeland.

And he's given an incredibly modest burial.

But within a decade, within about 12 years, the whole world has turned around and he's realized posthumously as the founding hero of not one, but several South American nations, which of course he is.

And people soon forget his many flaws.