Blurbs
The Thunder
and the
Flame
"One epic moment has survived in the annals of the English race — the last fight of the Revenge at Flores, in the Azores."
The words are those of Sir Winston Churchill, writing in the second volume of his History of the English Speaking Peoples. Strangely enough, that 'one epic moment' has not until now been dramatised or presented in fictional disguise; THE
THUNDER AND THE FLAME,
taking its title from Tennyson and its structure from meticulous research in England and in
Spain, is an intensely exciting reconstruction of the heroic
fight of Sir Richard Grenville in his famous galleon, the
Revenge, on the last day of
August 1591.
The Revenge, of 500 tons,
fought alone for 15 hours against a Spanish fleet of 53 sail; and the Spanish galleons, who laid themselves alongside her one after the other to pour their hundreds of
armoured soldiers against the dwindling band of English sailors, were each of them three times her size.
Sir Richard Grenville, Who lived in an age of individualists to whom high courage was as natural and as necessary as the blood in their veins, stands out as one of the most dramatic characters in England's history. Cousin as well as colleague-inadventure of Sir Walter Ralegh; lifelong rival of Sir Francis Drake (whose flag Revenge had carried against the Armada in 1588); soldier, sailor; above all, servant of the Queen: Grenville saw his moment, seized it in a supreme gamble into which he threw his life, his ship, his seamen and his reputation. All he stood to gain was honour.
THE THUNDER AND THE FLAME
presents in vivid, lurid detail a reconstruction of that naval engagement which can still
be regarded as the most extraordinary ever fought : a battle which, as Bacon wrote, was "like the act of Samson, that killed more men at his death, than he had done in the time of all his life".
The author
Alexander Fullerton is well-qualified to write novels with a naval background; he comes from a naval family, and went to the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth at the age of 13 in 1937. He went to sea as a midshipman at the end of 1941, serving first in the Mediterranean — in the battleship Queen Elizabeth, cruiser Orion and destroyer Hero, before joining submarines at Malta — and later in the North Sea and Far East; he ended the war as a lieutenant with a mention-indespatches for distinguished service. He resigned from the navy in 1949, and worked for ten years in South Africa. During this period, he had his first novel published —
SURFACE! — based on his
experience as gunnery and torpedo officer on the submarine Seadog. SURFACE! has so far sold nearly a million copies around the world. Since his return to England in 1958, he has published other kinds of fiction — including the novels CHIEF
EXECUTIVE, THE PUBLISHER and OTHER MEN'S WIVES — but is now
`back at sea' for good.
|
