Blurb

Talleyman

Thomas Talleyman, eldest son of a nouveau riche ironmaster, put into the Navy so that the family shall have one gentle-man, comes as a lieutenant in Santorin to Coulagh Bay in Ireland in 1847. He is in a Navy where every officer is torn between a need to work with the old equipment he can rely on, and a desire to use the half-understood new technology: each one has his ambitions fixed on the promised climactic battle with the French in the Channel, broadside to broadside in three-deckers. Instead, they find them-selves hunting slavers – or sent to distribute maize in Cork and Kerry in iron paddle-steamers. This country reminds Talleyman, as he sketches it, of the African coast, a land abandoned by any administration, yet with its responsibility hung around Britain's neck.

He watches and tries to understand the tensions between Catholic peasants, Anglo-Irish gentry landowners, Presbyterian yeomen farmers of the Militia, and the hard men on each side interested only in power. Talleyman, driven without his recognising it by a need for a wife and a home, tries like the rest of the regular forces to stand aside from Ireland's strife till he is caught up in the Cabbage Patch Rebellion and is driven by his training and loyalty to his service to take sides. But even at the end this loyalty comes second to the claims of friendship and of love.

This is the first of a series of Talleyman novels by a much praised historical novelist.

The author

John James was born during the Depression (and below sea level) in South Wales. He worked for thirty years in the Scientific Civil Service, during which time he published six books. He is now retired and lives in the Fens with his wife.

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