This title is only available to buy as part of a Set of Ronald Welch Novels or a Starter Library
After killing a man in a duel, a penniless Carey cousin, Robert Penderyn, escapes reprisal by becoming a lieutenant aboard a merchant ship sailing from Swansea with a cargo for Santander in 1583. With England and Spain at loggerheads, Robert becomes involved in foiling a Catholic plot to put Mary Queen of Scots on the English throne.
About Ronald Welch and the Carey Novels
Ronald Welch’s Carey novels, written between 1954 and 1972, follow the fortunes of the same 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 was 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. He was, by all accounts, an inspiring teacher, and he certainly knew how to bring history alive for younger readers. You can’t finish a Welch book without having grasped such precise details as the construction of a crusader’s armour and why it was so designed, or why the longbow was crucial to the English victory at the Battle of Crécy. Most importantly they’re brilliant reads – fast-paced, colourful and imaginative, with entirely believable central characters. The Careys are a distinguished Welsh landowning family and are involved in all the great events of their times, from the plots against Elizabeth I and the Civil War to the Peninsular War, the Crimea and the Indian Mutiny.
The original editions, published by Oxford University Press and illustrated by some of the best book illustrators of their day, are now almost impossible to find and fetch prohibitive prices. We’re delighted to make these wonderful books available again, with their original illustrations, in an elegantly designed and highly collectable series.
Joining up the Dots
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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...
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Ronald Welch knows just what boys enjoy – there are no useless characters, like parents or girls, to impede his hero’s adventurous progress. I particularly liked the section on board the merchant ship which gives an excellent view of 16th century sailing: the cramped quarters, the stench of the bilges, the hard, dangerous work of hauling up the sails, fighting at sea and so on.
Beautifully reprinted from the original 1971 edition and enhanced by Victor Ambrus’s original lively and historically accurate drawings, this is a book to treasure. Boys of 10 plus – and girls, too, should enjoy this rip-roaring tale.