1826: Spring

Freddy Hall is fourteen years old. He lives at the Sailor's Yarn inn in the village of Linbury on the coast of Dorset. His widowed dad is the local publican who is trying to get to grips with the new fangled beer pump in the cellar.

Freddy has no phone, no computer, no games console. There are no cars in the village, not even a bicycle, and he has to get to school on foot every day, except Sunday. Sunday is the day he attends the morning service at All Souls church across the road. It is all but compulsory.

Freddy has never heard of the Internet, nor social media, but he does have a few well-worn books and a telescope - and thinks himself lucky.

The year is 1826, and it's a bright Spring morning in April. The first day of the new term at Seekings School. Freddy's school. It's an easy two mile walk for him, but a more difficult journey of self discovery awaits him as he thrust into the everyday life of this prestigious seat of learning - of masters with a ready cane - of pupils with their ambitions, rivalries, hatreds and jealousies. Yet it's also a place where the virtues of loyalty, self-sacrifice and the bonds of deep friendship are forged.

There is the wider world too - of intrigue and deceit, in a setting not quite like that as told in the history books. King Henry XI is on the throne of Albion, not England. The foreign adversary is the Kingdom of Silesia, not France. But the similarities of this 1826 to the one that has been passed down to us, outweigh the differences. London is the capitol city - the foremost capitol in the world; the Parliament sits in Westminster; the Royal Navy rules the waves, and the Archbishop sits on the throne of Canterbury.

This is the first exciting instalment of Freddy's adventures which continue in four more books. Prepare to be enthralled...