The First of the English

Antwerp in 1567, with the Duke of Alva's garrison in the citadel and the Inquisition in the streets: Guy Chester, an English sea officer ashore without leave, falls in with the Dutch patriots, is outlawed with a price of three thousand guilders on his head as "De Eersteling der Engelschen", and falls in love with a girl whose father is on the other side. Gunter was a mining engineer and chemist who turned novelist at forty, published his first book himself when every house refused it, and sold in the hundreds of thousands; this one has a battle on skates and a statue with a secret. Sixty plates by painters from Munch to Peter von Hess follow the story's fields, battles and Low Country streets across three centuries of European art.