The Chains Of Albion

Reluctant hero Martin Jerrold returns in his second swashbuckling adventure in the vein of Flashman and Sharpe.

Swashbuckling adventure in Book Two of the Reluctant Adventures of Martin Jerrold. July 1806: Commanding a prison-hulk in the Medway, guarding French captives, Martin Jerrold thinks his war can’t get much better. He is far away from storm, battle and the other disagreeable elements of naval life. He can even keep his mistress, Isobel, close at hand. It seems too good to last. And so it proves. When one of the prisoners, Dumont, goes missing, Jerrold’s comfortable world is turned upside-down. He is ordered by the First Lord of the Admiralty to recapture the Frenchman at any cost. Jerrold doesn’t know it but the pursuit will take him clear across England: from the slums of London to the wilds of Dartmoor, to the newly fashionable resort of Brighton. But who is the mysterious Monsieur Dumont? Everyone is curious about him, from his old friend Mr. Nevell to politicians of all stripes – even the seductive Princess Caroline takes an unexpected interest. As Jerrold, with his usual mix of bad timing and bad behaviour, closes on his quarry, he begins to uncover an extraordinary tangle of deceit and treachery stretching back twenty years, which reaches to the most exalted levels of society on both sides of the Channel. And which some men will stop at nothing to protect.

Influenced by the visionary imagination of William Blake and the characters he created in The Four Zoas and Jerusalem, The Liberation of Albion is both a theogony, creation myth and tale of spiritual development. An epic poem that both engages with the past and exists firmly within modernity, the story follows the grand-man Albion and the grand-woman Jerusalem, as their lives are touched by fate and they find themselves embroiled in the desires and whims of the gods. When Albion is chained, bound, and laid low, Jerusalem is left to face the world alone. The Liberation of Albion seeks to reignite the imagination of modernity and reveal once more the intricate links between narrative, meaning, truth and beauty.

1859 accompanied by volume of maps with title: Engravings of plans, profiles and maps, illustrating the standard models, from which are built the important structures on the New York State canals.