The Spanish Armada is today regarded with faint embarrassment. In Spain, it is often limited to a little more than a footnote about a somewhat foolhardy endeavour, whilst in Britain, its defeat has gone from being a sign of divine salvation to a serious threat saved by a combination of luck and weather. Had it been successful, there is little doubt that it would have posed a genuine threat to Elizabeth I – with the ill-prepared English army having little chance of success against a vast Spanish force from the south and the prospect of a Catholic uprising in the North. The Armada's success may well have nipped England's fledgling superpower status in the bud.

But what if things fell somewhere in between?

In La Isla Blanca, Jack Tindale considers the cultural, economic and political consequences of a foreign occupation of the Isle of Wight and the effects of a humbled England and a strengthened Spain.

Any similarities to Gibraltar are, of course, entirely coincidental.