Gentleman Captain, and deals with an episode alluded to both in that book and other titles in the series – Matthew’s first experience of battle, the Battle of the Dunes in June 1658. Matthew was then eighteen years old and an Ensign in the tiny royalist army-in-exile, marching with its much larger ally, the Spanish army, to raise the French siege of Dunkirk. This battle has always intrigued me: the royalist general, James, Duke of York, had been trained by the French commander, Marshal Turenne (on horseback in the picture), who in turn was the former comrade-in-arms of the Spanish commander, the Prince of Condé, who had rebelled against France’s ruler, Cardinal Mazarin. This tangled web of loyalties was further complicated by the fact that Mazarin, a princeof the Roman Catholic church, had entered into an alliance with the virulently anti-Catholic Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, who provided 6,000 New Model Army veterans to the army besieging Dunkirk – not to mention the fleet moored offshore to bombard the Spanish positions. Thus Roundhead and Royalist armies battled each other one last time, amid the sand dunes of Flanders.

Battle of the Dunes – note the Commonwealth squadron off the coast

The Battle of the Dunes, fought, ironically, on exactly the same beaches from which the British army was evacuated in 1940, forms the climax of Ensign Royal. But before then, Matthew has to undertake a dangerous mission to England on behalf of his enigmatic brother, the Earl of Ravensden. This puts him at the very heart of a