Somerset, 1685: a gentleman wins a wife in a quarrel over a toast, Monmouth lands at Lyme with a rabble, and a letter that could hang everyone is in the wrong hands. Sabatini was Italian-born, raised across Europe, spoke five languages and chose to write in English because, he said, all the best stories are told in it; this early novel already has the swordwork and the irony that made Scaramouche. Fifty-three plates of taverns, cavalry charges and battle scenes by painters from Salvator Rosa to Edvard Munch run through the text, mustering the smoke and confusion of the rising itself.
