The Keys of Hell and Death
(2024)(The second book in the Divided Kingdom series)
A novel by Charles Cordell
The West Country, July 1643.
England’s bloody civil war has reached a bloody stalemate, with neither side able to secure a decisive advantage. But now the Royalists have spied an opportunity to seize the precious port of Bristol.
King Charles’s flamboyant nephew, Prince Rupert, leads his army out of Oxford to snatch the prize, supported by his brother, Prince Maurice, attacking from the south. In Bristol, the Parliamentary garrison commander, Colonel Nathaniel Fiennes has to contend with a lack of manpower in a city of divided loyalties as he prepares its defences for the onslaught to come.
The ensuing struggle will harness the enmity between the two Reeve brothers: carefree and dissolute Ralph, now a corporal of dragoons in Prince Maurice’s Regiment, and Francis, the embittered and fanatical Puritan in the Parliamentary horse.
It will also determine the fate of Moussa Dansocko, the West African slave accused of sorcery and witchcraft, Kendall Tremain, the fisherman who fights for Cornwall and its king, Abel Cowans, the impoverished naval gunner from Newcastle who finds himself working in Bristol docks when the assault on the city begins, and others, all with their diverse reasons for siding with one cause or the other in the brutal struggles of the divided kingdom.
“Heart-pounding action, heartbreaking loss as a nation tears itself apart. Day by agonising day, yard by bloody yard, men stand shoulder to shoulder to fight and die for their cause. Knife-sharp scholarly knowledge combined with the skill of a natural storyteller. Not to be missed.”
David Gilman, author of Master of War and The Englishman series
“I have been waiting for this second novel and am not disappointed. Once more Charles Cordell evokes the experience of the Civil War soldier more vividly than ever before and gives us characters whom we are eager to follow.”
Prof Ronald Hutton CBE
“Cordell plunges you into the fast-flowing battlefields of 1643, full of fear, tension and the relief of surviving. He brilliantly captures the plight of soldiers in realistic detail in and around battle.”
Lt Gen Richard Nugee CB, CVO, CBE
“Immerses you in the smoke, blood, and smell of burnt powder and death. It's a remarkable and unique talent for any author to hold his reader transfixed in a book that simply cannot be put down.”
Jeremy Ravenshaw Fowler, Adjutant General of the Sealed Knot Society.
Charles Cordell has been a career soldier and diplomat on the ground in the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa. He has seen humanity at its best, its worst and its most desperate. His novels draw both on time spent on the fraying margins of civilisation and studies of the great political and religious crises of 17th century Europe.
The Keys of Hell and Death is the second of his novels in the Divided Kingdom series, which chronicles Britain’s civil wars between 1642 and 1653.
Genre: Historical
England’s bloody civil war has reached a bloody stalemate, with neither side able to secure a decisive advantage. But now the Royalists have spied an opportunity to seize the precious port of Bristol.
King Charles’s flamboyant nephew, Prince Rupert, leads his army out of Oxford to snatch the prize, supported by his brother, Prince Maurice, attacking from the south. In Bristol, the Parliamentary garrison commander, Colonel Nathaniel Fiennes has to contend with a lack of manpower in a city of divided loyalties as he prepares its defences for the onslaught to come.
The ensuing struggle will harness the enmity between the two Reeve brothers: carefree and dissolute Ralph, now a corporal of dragoons in Prince Maurice’s Regiment, and Francis, the embittered and fanatical Puritan in the Parliamentary horse.
It will also determine the fate of Moussa Dansocko, the West African slave accused of sorcery and witchcraft, Kendall Tremain, the fisherman who fights for Cornwall and its king, Abel Cowans, the impoverished naval gunner from Newcastle who finds himself working in Bristol docks when the assault on the city begins, and others, all with their diverse reasons for siding with one cause or the other in the brutal struggles of the divided kingdom.
“Heart-pounding action, heartbreaking loss as a nation tears itself apart. Day by agonising day, yard by bloody yard, men stand shoulder to shoulder to fight and die for their cause. Knife-sharp scholarly knowledge combined with the skill of a natural storyteller. Not to be missed.”
David Gilman, author of Master of War and The Englishman series
“I have been waiting for this second novel and am not disappointed. Once more Charles Cordell evokes the experience of the Civil War soldier more vividly than ever before and gives us characters whom we are eager to follow.”
Prof Ronald Hutton CBE
“Cordell plunges you into the fast-flowing battlefields of 1643, full of fear, tension and the relief of surviving. He brilliantly captures the plight of soldiers in realistic detail in and around battle.”
Lt Gen Richard Nugee CB, CVO, CBE
“Immerses you in the smoke, blood, and smell of burnt powder and death. It's a remarkable and unique talent for any author to hold his reader transfixed in a book that simply cannot be put down.”
Jeremy Ravenshaw Fowler, Adjutant General of the Sealed Knot Society.
Charles Cordell has been a career soldier and diplomat on the ground in the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa. He has seen humanity at its best, its worst and its most desperate. His novels draw both on time spent on the fraying margins of civilisation and studies of the great political and religious crises of 17th century Europe.
The Keys of Hell and Death is the second of his novels in the Divided Kingdom series, which chronicles Britain’s civil wars between 1642 and 1653.
Genre: Historical
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