The Grove of Eagles Author:Winston Graham The time of the latter years of Queen Elizabeth's reign was one when England, still adjusting to Henry VIII's breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church, was in a state of constant fear of invasion from Philip II's Spain. The great Armada had been defeated in 1588, but by the middle of the 'nineties the Spaniards had come... more » to hold Calais and parts of the Brittany coast, so that conditions for an attempt to conquer England were much more favorable to them than they had been earlier, and sooner or later another fleet would surely sail.
In these circumstances the story of such men as John Killigrew, the Governor of Pendennis Castle, commanding the most vital position on the Cornish coast, is the story not only of their lives but of the history of the time.
The mounting crisis of these years is seen thought the eyes of Maugan Killigrew, John Killigrew's oldest and illegitimate son. In this brilliant combination of the state of nations with the fate of individuals Elizabethan England comes alive, as do the Cornish men and women who play such a notable part, in the hands of a master of historical novels. In the "Grove of Eagles" great events, great characters, and great narrative writing fuse into a huge and significant whole. « less