The Carey Novels by Ronald Welch
Ronald Welch’s fourteen Carey novels, written between 1954 and 1972, follow the fortunes of a Welsh land-owning family from their involvement in the Crusades to their service in the First World War. Grippingly plotted and scrupulously researched, together they join up the dots of English history in a remarkably vivid and human way.
Welch, a historian who served as a Tank Corps officer in the Second World War and in 1947 became Headmaster of Okehampton Grammar School in Devon, is a master of the precise detail that brings history alive for younger readers. His novels are brilliant reads – fast paced, colourful and imaginative, with entirely believable characters who take part in all the great events of their times, from the plots against Elizabeth I to the Crimea and the Indian Mutiny.
‘Ronald Welch, a tank commander turned schoolmaster, is one of the 20th century’s most underrated children’s writers. Like Hilary Mantel, he understood that what makes a lost epoch stick in your mind is not the dates but the details.’ Iona McLaren, Telegraph