Black Tom's Red Army

It is more than a year since printer’s apprentice turned Parliamentarian soldier William Sparrow and his Royalist rival HugoTelling last came to blows.

Parliament’s armies, bruised beaten and humiliated despite their ever increasing numerical advantage, have been reconstituted as the New Model Army.

Sparrow, veteran of a dozen battles, sieges and scrapes, is expecting to be offered a commission in ‘Black Tom’s Red Army’ - but his past has caught up with him.

After fathering a bastard on sometime sweetheart Mary Keziah, William has only just hung on to the rank of sergeant.

As the political and religious divides which have convulsed the country for three years grow more bitter by the day, the New Model Army heads north to challenge the King’s field army, commanded by the brilliant but dangerously compulsive Prince Rupert.

They meet at Naseby, where two worlds will collide.