The Grove of Eagles

Maugan Killigrew, the illegitimate son of a Cornish gentry family, grows up in a world shaped by privateering, debt, family loyalty and England’s worsening conflict with Spain. The novel uses the Killigrews’ local position on the Cornish coast to turn Elizabethan naval war into a story of inheritance, ambition and divided loyalties.

Its historical frame is Elizabethan England during the Anglo-Spanish War, including the Armada threat and later Spanish attempts against the English coast. Graham treats Cornwall not as a picturesque backdrop but as a vulnerable maritime frontier, where court politics, piracy, religion and European war all press into family life.