Trafalgar: The Biography of a Battle by Roy Adkins soon to be presented for sale on the brilliant BookLovers of Bath web site!
Published: London: Little, Brown, 2004, Hardback in dust wrapper.
Illustrated by way of: Black & White Photographs; Colour Plates; Black & White Plates; Maps; Tables; Illustrated endpapers and blanks;
From the cover: It is necessary for us to be masters of the sea for six hours only, and England will have ceased to exist Napoleon Bonaparte, June 1805
Just four months later something very different was to happen: Britain, under Nelson, mastered the sea for the six hours of the Battle of Trafalgar, annihilating her French and Spanish opponents. This resounding victory paved the way towards Napoleons defeat, a decade later, at Waterloo. But at Trafalgar, Britain lost her greatest maritime commander.
In Trafalgar: The Biography of a Battle, Roy Adkins embraces the battle, its prelude and its aftermath, in a narrative that is at once scholarly and breath-takingly exciting. This was the great deciding conflict of the Napoleonic Wars one that Adkins describes, with the use of many newly published first-hand accounts, in mesmerising, blow-by-blow detail. He evokes a smoke-hazed, claustrophobic world where sixty ships fought at terrifyingly close quarters, where cannon-balls splintered through wooden walls with deafening noise, where searing heat scalded the gun-deck and the surgeons cockpit became a vision of hell. Nelson, though heavily outnumbered, directed this theatre of war from the outset and, with his calculated risk-taking, changed the course of history.
Charting a magisterial route through the mass of contradictory accounts that subsequently appeared, Adkins also describes the scenes of jubilant celebration that followed the triumph of battle, and the hysterical mourning that greeted the tragedy of Nelsons death. Thirty thousand people besieged his coffin, yet an infinitely greater number were affected by Nelsons most lasting legacy the removal of the threat of invasion of England and Britains expansion into the largest empire the world has ever seen.
Very Good in Good Dust Wrapper. Dust wrapper sunned at the spine. Edges of the text block tanned. Text complete, clean and tight.
Black boards with Silver titling to the Spine. [XXIII] 392 pages. Index. Bibliography. 9½” x 6¼”.
Of course, if you don’t like this one, may I beguile you with my offerings from hither or maybe further, hand picked, books in my Military Naval catalogue?
BookLovers of Bath 