After the great success of his book on a single battle, AZINCOURT, Bernard Cornwell has interrupted his bestselling series on the making of England with a novel featuring a single battle , this time less known to us but another great story , full of wonderful discoveries .

In the summer of 1779 a British force of fewer than a thousand Scottish infantry backed by three sloops-of-war , was sent to what is now Castine in the State of Maine. The War of Independence was in its third year and the Scots were the only British troops between Canada and New York. Their orders were to make a garrison that could serve as a safe haven and a naval base. The State of Massachusetts was determined to expel the British and sent a fleet of forty vessels and some one thousand infantrymen to ' captivate , kill and destroy ' the invaders. But what followed was a classic example of impetuosity and irresolution on one side , and calm professionalism on the other . And what is so tantalising about the whole battle is the presence of two men , each of whom will become famous through later celebration in poetry : Paul Revere and John (later Sir John) Moore . T he story is told from both sides . The main characters are all real figures : the remarkable Peleg Wadsworth and the pillar of the Massachusetts establishment , Solomon Lovell , and on the British side , the consummate soldier , Francis McLean , and the young lieutenant , John Moore . It is a tale of men at war , the choices they made and the stresses they suffered . It is based on diaries , letters and the transcripts of the enquiries and court-proceedings that followed . The Penobscot Expedition was never an important event but it is an extraordinary story that has fascinated Bernard Cornwell for many years.