The Circle are the modern-day successors of the Knights of the Round Table. Armed with the latest military hardware and operating from a hidden fortress on the South Bank, they protect 21st-century Britain from certain very specific threats – criminals who, like the Circle’s own Knights, have characters from Arthurian legend living inside their heads. Jory Taylor, the Knight bearing the device of Sir Gawain, has grappled on the Circle’s behalf with mercenaries, serial killers and far-right terrorist cells. However, when he is captured by Gawain’s traditional enemy the Green Knight, he discovers a new side to the myths he lives by – one which, as he learns more about this clandestine world, becomes both threateningly personal and terrifyingly political. The legends of King Arthur are not the only stories with influence on the British psyche – and some of the others have their own, very different agendas. A smart, contemporary political thriller and a new kind of urban fantasy, The Pendragon Protocol is the first volume in The Devices Trilogy.

It’s 2015, and Camelot and Sherwood are at war. The Circle, the UK paramilitary agency whose Knights carry the devices of the members of King Arthur’s Round Table, is hunting the Green Chapel, eco-activists allied to Robin Hood’s Merry Men. For the Knights, this quest is personal as well as political: the Chapel’s leader, Jory Taylor, is himself an errant Knight – and he has stolen the Holy Grail from the British Museum. But this war is fought with modern weapons, and nowhere – from the Circle’s Thameside fortress to a Bristol squat, from the oldest pub in England to a music festival in Cheshire – will remain untouched. Before long, the enmity between its greatest heroes will tear Britain apart.

For the first time since the Dark Ages, Britain has a High King. The Pendragon device has returned, wielded by former paramilitary officer and eco-activist Jory Taylor. Under his rule, the UK faces an unparalleled social, economic and artistic renaissance – and an unprecedented challenge, for the original King Arthur’s reign was a brief flowering ending in devastation and betrayal. While a man claiming the device of Corineus the Trojan foments political unrest, and other nations’ devicial agents probe the realm mercilessly for weaknesses, High King Jordan must somehow rewrite his story’s ending, and usher in a true new order. One that stands some chance, at least, of outliving him.