Breathless Diversions

This hilariously entertaining, deliciously sexy novel of British seapower at the turn of the 19th century is Horatio Hornblower handled with outrageous camp and terrific pace and drive. The naval scenes are superb and Anatolia is a matchless heroine.’

Few sons are blessed with a mother like Anatolia. Freed in girlhood from the sexual and political strictures of the Victorian Age, she makes it her mission to spread liberation among the haughty and powerful captains of the Queen’s Navy. What Anatolia of the mysterious past wants most is a suitable father (or fathers!) for her son and enough patronage to make him, in time, a British admiral. But Midshipman Algernon Block showed no inclination to fulfil his mother’s ambition.

With his fiddle in one hand and the other toying with his trouser-flap, he was undistracted by the new politics of revolution or the frenzied development of great steel fleets by countries heading towards war. Not until the Boxer Rebellion takes him to Peking, and the fabulous erotic treasures of the Breathless Diversions, is Algernon galvanised into a worthy—and prosperous—son.
How Algernon and Anatolia rearrange history is the theme of this highly irreverent and entertaining tale set in the heyday of swashbuckling Imperialism.