Jack Steel

The Jack Steel novels follow a British grenadier officer through the great continental campaigns of the War of the Spanish Succession. Beginning in Bavaria in 1704, Steel serves under John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, and rises through an army in which courage in battle is inseparable from patronage, rivalry and the politics of coalition warfare.

Across Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde and the operations around Lille, the trilogy combines large-scale campaigning with secret assignments, intercepted correspondence and threats from within the Allied world. Steel’s responsibility to his men gives the series its centre: victory may be decided by generals, but orders must be carried out by soldiers who rarely know the whole political purpose behind them.