Exclusive interview with author Robert Hutchinson and his book that reads like a novel about the failure of the Spanish Armada
Rating: 4 Stars
by Gabrielle Pantera
“The Spanish Armada campaign was the first conflict fought using the kind of espionage and propaganda techniques we would recognize today in the 21st century,” says The Spanish Armada author Robert Hutchinson. “The English fleet did not defeat the Spanish. Only four Armada ships were lost as a result of combat. The Royal Navy was hampered by a lack of gunpowder and munitions by a tight-fisted queen throughout the running fight up the English Channel. Instead, the Armada was defeated by terrible weather, unrealistic planning and logistics, poor tactics and just plain bad luck.”
Hutchinson excels at describing military campaigns. There’s ambition, drama, military maneuvers and humor. You are right in the action throughout the whole book. Hutchinson uses eyewitness accounts and papers from the National Archives of both England and Spain. There are many accounts of how the Spanish lost the battle and ultimately the war, but this book sheds new light on how ill-prepared the British were for this fight.
In October 1585 King Philip II of Spain, Elizabeth’s former brother-in law, declared he will destroy Protestant England. He began preparing to invade England. Elizabeth I, crowned Queen of England in 1558, put the country once again in religious turmoil by making it a Protestant country. The Catholic countries, especially Spain, became hostile towards England.
“The most surprising thing that happened while writing this book was the realization that Elizabeth I really had only one card to play, the 38 ships of her Royal Navy,” says Hutchinson. “No wonder she vetoed plans for them to be stationed off the Spanish coast to fight the Armada as it departed its home ports. She would have lost everything if they had suffered a defeat. Queen Elizabeth did not have a standing army to defend her shores.” Elizabeth would have to rely on the militia.
Almost half Elizabeth’s subjects were Catholic. “Her ministers and King Philip of Spain firmly believed they would rise up in support of the Spanish invaders,” says Hutchinson. “In the event, they did not and we see the first signs of English patriotism and a sense of national identity emerge after the Armada was chased away.”
Besides The Spanish Armada and Elizabeth’s Spymaster (a fascinating account of Tudor espionage pioneered by leading courtier, Francis Walsingham), Hutchinson has also written The Last Days of Henry VIII; Young Henry, Thomas Cromwell and House of Treason (the story of the Tudor dukes of Norfolk). He just completed the manuscript of The Atrocious Crimes of Colonel Blood, to be published in the United Kingdom in April 2015. This is the thrilling story of a seventeenth-century Irish adventurer who stole the Crown Jewels and was involved in innumerable attempts to assassinate King Charles II, before becoming a double agent and a spy for the king.
Hutchinson says his goal is making history accessible to a wider audience. “English history is so dramatic. A Hollywood scriptwriter could not dream up more compelling drama than the twists and turns of true history. It’s also so entertaining with great characters, good or evil, and strong story lines. One reviewer wrote that she could not believe that she was kept up to 2am reading my biography of Thomas Cromwell.”
Hutchinson lives in a sixteenth century thatched house in the countryside near Arundel, West Sussex with his wife.
The Spanish Armada by Robert Hutchinson. Hardcover: 432 pages, Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books (June 10, 2014), Language: English, ISBN: 9781250047120 $32.99
