One biographer wrote that The Armada was "written in purple prose but a royal purple, which read like historical fiction."[3] Another biographer noted that Mattingly "treated his job as that of telling a story about people" and that The Armada was "that rarity, a book by a professional historian and admired by professional historians which nevertheless became a best seller."[4] The Armada remains in print and has also been issued outside the United States under the title The Defeat of the Spanish Armada.