Sean Mcglynn

Singeing the King of Spain’s beard was one provocation too many

According to a new history of the Spanish Armada, Elizabeth I was chiefly to blame for the crisis of 1588

Queen Elizabeth I: The Armada portrait. [Alamy] 
issue 14 January 2023
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  • Armada: The Spanish Enterprise and England’s Deliverance in 1588

    Colin Martin and Geoffrey Parker

    Yale, pp. 718, £30

In the 1964 Hammer film The Devil-Ship Pirates, a privateer of the defeated Spanish Armada escapes the English fleet and puts in for repairs at an isolated coastal village whose inhabitants have not received news of the battle’s outcome. There the Spanish convince the villagers that Spain was victorious, and so impose submission on them.

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