Will I love The Armada?

Mattingly’s The Armada is the seminal nonfiction account of the epic 16th-century clash between the England of Queen Elizabeth I and the Spanish Empire of King Philip II.

The author was extremely thorough in his research and analysis. His work contains compelling insights and quality prose. The book inspired me to write a dramatized account of the battle within the historical fiction genre, which I have just completed after a year of focused effort.

This will be the capstone to my series of nautical fiction novels that are set in the Age of Sail.   

This is a comprehensive and scholarly non-fiction book providing a chronological history of the geopolitical and military events leading up to the 1588 Battle of the Spanish Armada while providing an exhaustive but crisp narrative of the battle itself and its aftermath. Like most people, I had long heard about the Spanish Armada but had failed to grasp the scope and scale of that tragic enterprise, nor the complex diplomacy, espionage and politics that surrounded that climatic encounter between Elizabethan England and Imperial Spain. This book helped me develop a backdrop for my featured novel within the Elizabethan World in… show more.