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The story of the rise and fall of the powerful and mysterious Knights of the Temple: the Third Crusade under Richard the Lionheart. It is sixty years since the secret Brotherhood of Sion, founders of the Knights Templar, uncovered the treasure vouchsafed them beneath the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Now the ambitious and ruthless Plantagenet King Richard the Lionheart leads the Third Crusade against Saladin, and both the honour of the Templars and the mission of the Brotherhood are at risk. Andrew Sinclair is one of the few survivors of the Battle of Hattin in 1187. As a member of the clandestine Brotherhood he was taught Arabic before being sent to the Holy Land on a mission that neither the Order of Templars nor the leaders of the Pope's armies can know of. Sinclair's captivity following the battle led to his friendship with the infidel and threatened to divide his loyalty. One of the great secrets of the Brotherhood is that they are not Christians, unlike the Templars. Sinclair's cousin and fellow member of the Brotherhood, Sir Andre St Clair, arrives with Richard from Cyprus. The secret mission they must pursue will lead them into the desert and the lair of the fearsome Assassins. And meanwhile Saladin's clever tactics in battle, including the butchery of the magnificent destriers, the massive horses that carry armoured Frankish knights, bring reversals to the Christian cause from start of the Crusade. But it is Richard the Lionheart's treachery and deceit that convince both cousins that the Crusade is a sham, and that all men are venal and greedy, driven by the lust for power. Only their knowledge of the Order of Sion saves them from despair: their secret mission becomes more vital than ever before. This glorious epic tells the true and truly astonishing story of the Knights of the Black and White. Lead title / The Crusades and the Knights Templar are increasingly popular areas of history, demonstrated the huge success of films such as 'Kingdom of Heaven' as well as the popularity of 'Holy Blood, Holy Grail' and 'The Last Templar' / Learned but popular, a story of the Templars for both serious scholars and readers of historical fiction / Competition: Bernard Cornwell, Raymond Khoury, Stephen Lawheard, Simon Scarrow, Michael Jecks

About the Author

Jack Whyte was born and raised in Scotland, and educated in England and France. He migrated to Canada from the UK, in 1967, as a teacher of High School English, but he only taught for a year before starting to work as a professional singer, musician, actor and entertainer--a career he followed, one way and another and with many variations, for the next twenty years.
In the early 1970s, Whyte researched, wrote, directed and appeared in a one man show based on the life and times of Robert Burns, Scotland's national poet. He toured Canada with the presentation, which he had written to appeal to non-Scots, Canadian audiences, de-mystifying the poet and his works and making them understandable and enjoyable to North Americans. The success of the show led him into writing for CBC National television, and eventually to a career in advertising, where he learned his craft as Head Writer and Creative Director of several advertising agencies before moving to the other side of the client-agency relationship, to act as Corporate Communications Director for a number of public and private companies.

Whyte's interest in 5th Century history and the 460-year Roman military occupation of Britain springs from his early Classical education in Scotland during the 1950s, and he has pursued his fascination with those times ever since. That interest, allied with an equally fervent preoccupation with the Arthurian legend, led him, in 1978, to a sudden realization of the probable truth underlying the legend's central mystery of the Sword in the Stone. Then, knowing how it had been done, Whyte set out to tell the story, and to establish King Arthur securely in a realistic and feasible historical context. His saga, fleshed out by years of research, continues to unfold to the delight of his large and growing audience. Whyte is married, with five adult children, and lives in British Columbia, Canada.