Trafalgar

by Nicholas Best

Two hundred years ago Napoleon Bonaparte planned to lead his Grande Armée to Britain, the only country still defying him. From Bonaparte’s headquarters to the admirals’ flagships, from William Pitt and his volunteers on the English coast to the lower decks of the British, French and Spanish battleships, in Trafalgar we see the story unfold at every level as the fleets manoeuvre for advantage. Nicholas Best’s original research has drawn upon a wide range of eyewitness accounts to craft a minute-by-minute recreation of the most famous sea battle of all time. Praise for ‘Trafalgar was not only a great sea battle, it saved Britain from invasion by Napoleon. That is why this book, which rattles along excitingly, gave me fresh appetite for the subject. It sets Nelson’s victory in that context – the risks of 1940 were just as grave in 1805 …’ - Peter Lewis, Daily Mail ‘This gripping book tells the story of Britain’s legendary naval victory on October 21, 1805 in which the national hero, Admiral Lord Nelson, was killed by a French sharpshooter … Nicholas Best has done an excellent job describing the build up to the Battle and the primitive conditions on the ships … This book is replete with fascinating details’ - Anthony Looch, Glasgow Evening Times ‘You can almost smell the whiff of gunsmoke and feel the sweat on both sides as the battle begins. This is history with a page-turning quality’ - Good Book Guide Nicholas Best grew up in Kenya and graduated from Trinity College, Dublin before joining the Grenadier Guards. He became a financial journalist after leaving the army and later a full-time author. He has written novels, travel and history books, and was the Financial Times’ fiction critic for ten years. He lives in Cambridge.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Nautical, Military Fiction, European History, War, British Literature

401 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 1, 2005

About the author

Nicholas Best grew up in Kenya and was educated there, in England and at Trinity College, Dublin. He served in the Grenadier Guards and worked as a journalist in London before becoming a full time author.
His first novel ('As a satire on military bigotry and shambling officialdom, Where were you at Waterloo? is in places as sharp as Waugh and sometimes better' - Times Literary Supplement) was written at Harvard. His second, Tennis and the Masai ('The funniest book of the year - Daily Telegraph) was serialized on BBC Radio 4.
He has since written many other books, including Happy Valley: the Story of the English in Kenya, The Greatest Day in History, about the Armistice of 1918, and Five Days that shocked the World, about the end of the Second World War.
Best was the Financial Times's fiction critic for ten years. In 2010, he was long-listed for the Sunday Times-EFG Bank award of £30,000, the biggest short story prize in the world. He lives in Cambridge.
For more information, visit www.nicholasbest.co.uk

Reviews

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

* My thanks to David Haviland at Thistle Publishing for inviting me to read Trafalgar. I have given an honest unbiased review in exchange *

The most important sea battle of the 19th century, The Battle of Trafalgar, was a naval engagement fought by the British Royal Navy against the combined fleets of the French and Spanish Navies, during the War of the Third Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars.

Nicholas Best presents an excellent account of this most famous battle, highlighting the events that led up to it, and the excitement and expectations of Napoleon’s mighty armies as they assembled in Boulogne, in readiness for the invasion of England. Use of eye witness accounts are employed with great success, both from within the armies, the admirals’ cabins, and from the men who endured horrendous close quarter action up on the gun decks. The author’s portrayal of Nelson and Napoleon and other leading players in the battle is particularly insightful, and the amount of research needed to create this excellent book must have been immense, giving as it does, a real sense of the actual events.

Extremely well written, fascinating for it’s depth of detail, that most ferocious and bloody of battles, ‘Trafalgar’ is told so eloquently that it’s a must for any history buff.

[Constantine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 4.0/5.0

Although this is non-fiction the book reads like historical fiction. The writing is so easy to read, grasp and written in an intriguing and very interesting way. Reading about Napoleon Bonaparte and the greatest historical Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 was a great experience especially since I have not covered these subjects before.

We get to read about what the witnesses say who lived in that era and experienced all the events that lead to the battle and during it. I really liked the way the author kept the chapters short and the writing simple but at the same time getting to the point with each chapter's goal.

The book has so many different stories from different individuals. Many are heart touching and have so many details to them. This itself makes this non-fiction book read like a very enjoyable collection of stories. If you are looking for information about Trafalgar then I would recommend this book.

Many thanks to David Haviland from Thistle Publishing who provided me a free copy of this book in return of an honest unbiased review.

[Noah Goats · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was a teenager my dad gave me one of the Hornblower novels. I loved it and immediately tore through the whole series. I lived in the desert about 800 miles away from the nearest ocean, but these books connected with me in a big way and I’ve been reading about the era of wooden ships ever since.

Trafalgar is a well written and exciting work of history. Nicholas Best does a great job of explaining what was at stake (everything), describing the relative strengths and weaknesses of both sides, illuminating some of the personalities, and then bringing the legendary battle to us with all its roaring guns and scuppers running with blood.

If one of my friends came to me and said “I watched Master and Commander last night and want to learn more about the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, what book would you recommend I start with?” (this scenario is, I have to admit, highly unlikely) I would tell him to read this one (or maybe Nelson’s Trafalgar by Roy Adkins). This is an excellent and highly readable book.

[Phillip Mclaughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

well done

The horror and threat of a cross channel invasion.
A huge army ready to roll over England like a wave.
England unprepared.
A well done history which embraces the reader and carries along until a massive fight to the finish.
Well done

[Jeanette · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Napoleon era is a period in history that i know very little about, so had no hesitation in accepting an invite to read it. What a wonderful and interesting read it was, and it certainly had me gripped from start to finish. A well deserved five stars. Highly recommended.

My thanks to Netgalley and the Publishers for my copy and this is my honest review.

[Elizabeth]

Title : Trafalgar
Author: Nicholas Best
Genre: History -Nonfiction
Thristle Publishing
Pages:346
Type of book: Netgalley
Book synopsis
Beginning with a vivid recreation of Napoleon's army assembling at Boulogne for the invasion of England, Nicholas Best tells how the French fleet joined with their Spanish allies and set out for a decisive battle with the Royal Navy.

Following events through the eyes of eyewitnesses on the gun deck as well as the admiral's cabins, he takes us to the Mediterranean and the West Indies and back to the coast of Spain as the rival fleets manoeuvre for advantage. Then follows his gripping minute-by-minute account of the actual battle: a truly murderous affair as the rival fleets trade cannon shots as point-blank range.

My thoughts
Rating: DNF at 18%
Would I recommend it: yes and No
: To people like myself who loves to read nonfiction and they can see and fell what the characters went through and get an image of the time the story takes place : No
But to people who love to read boring history book types then yes
Will I be read any more by this author : No
Sadly I had to DNF it at 18% because it was boring , and it took me a day and most of the night just to get 18 % in to the book , there was times I was even talking to my friend Robin about it ( Robin if and when you see this thanks for listing to me talk about how boring and dull)
Like I said it was boring, dull and even at times tedious to read . And came off like I was reading a history book .
Good things:
It showed the good and bad side of the defense of the English and Napoleon military
It talks about the military's leaders and why they was loved and like by their men and give a bit of history about them
talked about the places and give history on them as well

Bad things:
Napoleon was pompous as well as a douche bag
Pompous because of how he thought he was better then the English and Paris people and how he was going to show them up
He kept comparing himself to Caeser
A Douche bag because
He would write litters to his wife and say he was coming to visit but in reality he was going to see one of her Lady In Waiting
He even went to see one of the graves of a king and then had them bring up part of that kings bones so he could touch them , and was even think of having them to bring back that kings crown, jewels , and his sward and other stuff so he could wear them the day he became Emperor just to show the English and the people of Paris that he was better then them,
He never listened to his military , and they in turn was scared that if they spoke out against him they would lose their lives .
Need I say more about him , because not even his on military liked him or his own people and wanted the English to win and bring him down.
A part from it being boring, dull and tedious it did have a lot of interesting facts about history that i did in fact like just wish the author told it a lot better then he did .
With that said I want to say thanks to Netgalley as well as to Thristle Publishing for letting at lest try and read it , in exchange for my honest opinion.

[Fred M · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me, this book was a personal-ignorance-reduction read

Although I’ve been to the London Underground’s Trafalgar Square Station (and so have seen the statue there), I knew almost nothing about the Battle of Trafalgar. So when this book showed up as a deal-of-the-day, I figured it was time to educate myself.

The first half of the book focuses on Napoleon’s strategy and efforts to invade England with his Grand Army – and on England’s planning and preparation to resist that seemingly inevitable invasion. The book provided interesting and useful background information that touched on motivations, tactics, strategy, misdirection and guesswork by the French, the English and, to a lesser extent, the Spanish (who were allied with the French).

Of course, to invade England, the French had to transport the Grand Army across the English Channel. Napoleon was capable of planning strategic army movements over long distances within a very strict timetable. But now Napoleon had to coordinate both army forces and naval forces to orchestrate an invasion of England. And unlike a land army, planned movements of naval forces are subject to the vagaries of tides, winds, currents and other weather factors – factors Napoleon appeared not to fully appreciate.

Napoleon needed his warships to protect the many smaller craft required to ferry his Grand Army to English beaches. And England needed to either keep those French warships blockaded within the French ports or else intercept & destroy those French warships when they sallied from those ports. And finally, on 21 October 1805, the inevitable naval battle occurred.

With nearly 30 British ships intercepting an even greater number of French and Spanish ships, I felt the author had quite the challenge to describe the battle in the detailed and coherent manner that he did. One reason that he could was that some slower British ships were late to the battle and some lead French ships were positioned a ways ahead of the English ships’ initial point-of-attack on the French/Spanish fleet. That allowed the battle description to be somewhat simplified. In addition, the author focused on the actions of the larger capital ships within each fleet. Still, the battle damage inflicted on so many ships of both fleets, as well as the human carnage, resulted in a gory and chaotic conflict. Yet I though the author did a good job describing the flow of events within what were clearly chaotic circumstances.

Lord Nelson, the top admiral of the English fleet, was fatally wounded early in the conflict. The final part of the book covers bring his body home to national adulation and national grief.

My main complaint is with the Kindle formatting of this book. The book would switch from French perspective to English perspective (or vice versa) without any visual break between the paragraphs. Also, there was minimal differentiation between normal text and embedded quotes. It seemed like perhaps this Kindle text was created automatically via some shoddy text-scanning mechanism.

Bottom Line: A good book for learning about the Battle of Trafalgar. But Kindle formatting of the text was subpar.

[Ramon Sunico · Rating 5 out of 5]

After just finishing the Horatio Hornblower series (and Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin roman fleuve before that), it was high time I read up on the history behind these two cycles set in Napoleon's time. And so, when I stumbled upon Nicholas Best's Trafalgar in my late father-in-law's library on my mother's birthday, I followed the lead of all the superstitious sailors I had read about, took the happenstance as a happy chance and brought the book home.

As the blurbs promised, it was a riveting read with Best employing the very effective technique of using short chapters that allowed a rapid (but orderly) pan-and-zoom of the many events that led to the great naval battle. His portrayal of character (especially of the leading figures of the time, most notably Napoleon and Nelson, Collingwood and Villeneuve) was pin-sharp, a masterly weave of narrative and quotation.

The book also had a wonderful breadth because Best chose not to limit himself merely to the encounters at sea. Instead, using the technique mentioned above, he told the parallel story of Napoelon and his Grand Army's breathtaking race from Boulogne in France's western coast to the Germanic fortress city of Ulm in the east, all the while, leavening his accounts of the dreams and failings of the great men with the sharp observations of the small. Foot soldiers and 12-year-old midshipmen. Whores and unlucky bystanders pressed to serve a country that was not even theirs.

It is no mean feat then that with the simple elegance of his efficient prose and his unerring eye for the pithy detail, Best was able to achieve an evocation of the great sagas of O'Brian and Forester and move this reader in the way great novels can, with the simultaneous engagement of the mind and heart in the recognition of humanity across the time and space of history.

[Diego Palomino · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book so much that I read it in three sittings with most of it coming in the last 24 hours. I love history, to me is a time machine that transports me to the past and places me in the middle of historical events that have made a difference in time and in the world. Many people I talk to disliked history while in school they found it boring. I believe the difference is in how the story is told. This author is someone who knows how to tell a good story it almost has a cinematic quality to it. Though The Book is called Trafalgar is really about much more than that. He lays things from a macroscopic perspective because it’s not just about the battle at Trafalgar but is about what led to it, the impact in world politics, European society, economics the impact on common folks as well as the high ranking military and political big wigs. If you want to know what was Trafalgar about you can look it up in Wikipedia and you’ll get the 411 In five minutes. However, if you want to be dropped in the middle of the whole experience read this book. It’s very informative and entertaining with a great deal of detail of minute by minute events as they occurred. I’m so impressed by this author I bought two more of his books. Enjoy.

[John M Qualls · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very revealing about wood sailing ships, how short of time they last and have to be replaced. The horror of ships fighting each other, how close they get when fighting, cannon balls tearing men’s heads off, killing many at one time, going right thru a ship, just as horrible as trench warfare in WW1. If you’re wounded you’re just as good as dead or going to be crippled the rest of your life. How the British threw the dead right off the ship rather than keeping all the dead on the ship as some other nations did. How they blew the other ships riggings and sails off, killing men when they fell and stopped the ship’s controlled movement. How very long men are on a ship , getting no pay until they return to home port. The rewards the captains and admirals get for captured ships and how little the men get, they’re just lucky to get home. Men are kidnapped to man the ships. How much Nelson was adored and glorified by the English people, they worshipped him, he was their hero. Men, women, and children cried publicly when they heard he was killed, throngs waited for hours to look and touch his casket, overshadowed the victory over the French.

[Bonnye Reed · Rating 5 out of 5]

GA I had considered myself fairly knowledgeable about these battles between France and Britain and the dastardly deeds of Napoleon but this history by Nicholas Best sure filled in a LOT of blanks. There seems to have been a slight learning curve between history as seen in 1960/1970 era and that available today.

Trafalgar: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sea Battle in History brings to vivid detail those battles between the considered well prepared troops of France and the not so well trained British troops and navy. The gross errors made on both sides could have easily swayed this encounter either way, at any point in those encounters. Luck, both good and bad, could have turned the tide for either side.

This was a book that kept me up nights. I received a free electronic copy of this novel from Nicholas Best and George Weidenfeld & Nicholson - Thistle Publishing in exchange for an honest review. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me.


Publisher gift
pub date Dec 13, 2018
Thistle Publishing
NOt available at B&N

[Sreevarsha Sreejith · Rating 5 out of 5]

The events are described to perfection without going over the top with details but at the same time conveying the emotional intricacies very well. The language is simple, seamless and gripping, with everything correlated wonderfully. The author has succeeded in making history fun to read for laymen such as myself. My verdict for this book is, informative, fascinating and well worth a read !

For a more detailed review, please visit https://sreevarshasreejith.blogspot.c....

[Cynda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book provides a good overview of the topic in a narrative format, so readable. This book serves as a refresher for those, like me, who only ever had basic general information about Trafalgar and can easily serve those wishing to gain a first level of understanding of the battle.

When I needed/wanted more information, I found it readily at Wikipedia.

I am glad to read and relearn from such an accessible book. Thanks for o my GR friend Larry for recommending this book.

[James Flanagan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding

We all know the context for D-Day but I never knew the immediate historical and military situations preceding Trafalgar until this extremely well-written book. The research is first rate

[John Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nicholas Best effectively describes this historic October 1805 sea battle, as well as what leads up to it and the aftermath. Although there are many other significant military and political figures involved, Vice Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson and Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte are the two protagonists. Mr. Best describes in detail Lord Nelson’s death premonitions and urge to make sure that his dependents are well cared for should he not survive, so it is surprising that Nelson makes himself conspicuous in his “admiral’s hat and four glittering orders on his left breast” when the battle starts. A French sharpshooter kills Nelson early in the battle and Vice Admiral Collingwood takes over, but Admiral Nelson gets total credit for the victory because his leadership, strategy, and management of men put the British in position to achieve victory.

Napoleon’s desire to invade Great Britain is what leads to the Battle of Trafalgar, but Mr. Best makes it clear that although Napoleon is a master at commanding his Grand Army, he is limited in his understanding of naval principles.

Of the 47,000 men who start the battle, approximately 5,000 are killed and 4,000 are wounded, and substantial damage is done to ships on both sides. It is surprising to read that the prisoners were treated very civilly by the British and the prisoners showed much respect for their captors – almost like a sporting event instead of a matter of life and death with such historic significance.

Mr. Best addresses two of the unsolvable mysteries of the battle of Trafalgar:
(1) Did the French sharpshooter who shot and killed Nelson survive the battle? Multiple Frenchmen claim to have been on board the Redoutable and fired the fatal shot. But one midshipman and the lieutenant who commanded the marines aboard Nelson’s flagship, the HMS Victory, claim that they killed all the sharpshooters on the Redoutable’s mizentop, and their testimonies seems valid.
(2) Was Admiral Pierre Villeneuve’s stabbing death the result of suicide? Villeneuve was the French admiral who commanded the French and Spanish fleet. His efforts before and during the battle were neither understood nor appreciated by Napoleon. After surrendering to the British, he spent six months as a prisoner on parole in England and then was returned to France in a prisoner exchange. He wrote a letter indicating a desire to return to military service, but there was no response. One morning he was found dead in his hotel room with six stab wounds, and an inquest concluded that it was death by suicide. Best presents the cases for both suicide and execution by orders from Napoleon, and he seems to favor execution.

The book is well researched with a bibliography of 99 sources including 12 dated from the 19th century, but it does not use footnotes. Mr. Best’s style is very readable, and he works many relevant observations of people involved in the events described into the narrative.

So, this book does an excellent job of explaining why the British people hold Lord Nelson in such high regard, but I still do not understand why the statue on Nelson’s Monument in Trafalgar Square is 170 feet high – where viewers cannot appreciate its details.

[MisterLiberry Head · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a well-sourced account of one of the most significant naval battles in history, which was bitterly fought off Cape Trafalgar on October 21, 1805. It reads not at all like a scholarly naval history but more like a feature article from ‘Smithsonian Magazine.’ Frequent excerpts from primary sources highlight the appalling carnage and hellish din that characterized the clash between the British ships and a combined Spanish and French fleet. On some ships, roughly one in three of the crew were killed or wounded. Lord Nelson’s flagship, ‘Victory,’ lost 57 men dead and 102 wounded. Nelson himself was fatally wounded by a French sharpshooter perched high overhead in the mizentop. He lived only long enough to know that his warships had won “the greatest naval victory his country had ever known” (p326). Author Nicholas Best does not get bogged down in nautical jargon, and he puts Lord Nelson’s magnificent victory of the context of how it permanently thwarted Napoleon's plan to cross the Channel and invade an England unready to repel his Grand Army. So dramatic was Best’s account of the naval battle and the experiences related later by survivors, that Mister Liberryhead couldn’t help thinking about a line from Edgar Lee Masters’s epitaph poem “Knowlt Hoheimer” –
‘When I felt the bullet enter my heart
I wished I had staid at home…’

[Oliver · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the title might give away, this book reports on the Battle of Trafalgar - a highly consequential naval encounter in 1805 between the British Royal Navy and the French, allied with Spain.

The lengthy prelude succeeds in comprehensively framing the context leading up to the battle and introduces the key characters. Most importantly, it establishes the inconceivably high stakes, thereby imbuing the entire build-up with a breathless tension.

The retelling of the battle itself is brimming with incredible play-by-play detail, as Best discerns the most likely version of events, given the variegated and sometimes contradictory accounts (Rashomon effect!). He utilises snippets of first-hand accounts throughout the book, but these are particularly effective and poignant when recalling the devastating warfare witnessed by those engaged in the battle. The author's own description of the chaos also uses hauntingly vivid imagery and conveys the horror of war at sea expertly.

Whilst some of the sailing terminology may have flown over my head like a stray cannonball, the book is smartly structured, making a complex series of simultaneously occurring events easy to understand. All in all, this was an informative and entertaining account of a swashbuckling battle won by the Royal Navy, which gave us some of the most iconic lines in history.

[Rey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trafalgar lives up to its great reviews. It maintained my interest throughout. The history is laid out in easy to understand terms, and reads like a true adventure in time

The book doesn't include any land or sea maps or illustrations of the various ships, or characters such as Napoleon, Lord Nelson, etc, which this book could have loaded up on. These seemed somewhat essential, and was the reason I gave it four stars.

The history itself is told in a five star format, I enjoyed the book very much. It did include tons of excellent detail from the time period, first hand witnesses accounts etc, that were laid out very nicely

After reading Trafalgar, there is little doubt in my mind, that Nicholas Best is an outstanding writer

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trafalgarl always enjoyed history

I have always enjoyed historian the art of warfare of each side. The British in their fight against Napoleon, Bonaparte was a classic example of a well laid plan, and military might against an incompetent leader in Napoleon that it never ran into people that were well-versed in battles. The mistakes that the French Navy combine with the Spanish naval forces made against the British were classic examples of promoting people well beyond their ability. The British, on the other hand promoted people that were surrounded by very confident seamen. I was surprised that the British man of war frigates had wives and girlfriends fighting in their 841 person crew. it was a good book and a very interesting read.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4.5 stars) - This was a really good book about the battle of Trafalgar which set it firmly in its historical milieu (the attempted invasion of England by Napoleon). The author has done exhaustive research and includes dozens of personal accounts of the battle, adeptly woven into a narrative that does a good job of keeping one's interest as they read.

Obviously Horatio Nelson, the command admiral and hero of the battle plays a large part in the narrative, but we also get glimpses of the experience of able seamen, and even surprisingly, a French woman who fought in the battle, barely survived, and later located her husband who also survived.

Good book, I thoroughly enjoyed.

[F.Hagan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trafalgar

I have read re.the battle of Trafalgar in other accounts,and as a retired former Seaman Gunner in the RN I took pride in what was achieved .
This book is by far the best account I have ever read.
It covers everything it can, but I still wonder why Nelson never covered his medals/awards.
He made an easy and obvious target but what a great leader and Seaman! He was just when we needed him.
Also the book shows Collingwood as his great deputy something other books ignore.

[Vien Guenther · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book, written like a fictional suspense thriller. The story is unbelievable, sad, full of unnecessary carnage and true bravery. This is the "greatest sea battle in history," between England, France, and Spain. What incredible ships they had back then, each relying on the wind to get into action. The story began with the planned invasion of England by Napoleon, which was thwarted by several circumstances. This battle was Nelson's last and confirmed his reputation as the greatest naval commander in the Royal Navy. Good Read!

[Terry · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Tale of Greatness

Exceptional read, brings the awesome but sometimes harrowing story of Trafalgar to life against the backdrop of Napoleon's plans to invade England. Fascinating insight into the remarkable exploits of a true legend in Lord Nelson and every other rank in the Royal Navy who was involved. Loved reading this book and highly recommend it.

[David Sowers]

Big Boats, Cannons

A dandy exhaustive history of the battle, participants, and the era. It's also eminently readable. My one gripe is that Best never passes on a chance to throw shade on Napoleon, in the time-honored British tradition, and it becomes boring after the fiftieth time.

Still, all in all, an excellent work.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

No maps, illustrations or period paintings?

Frankly a gauge historical books on whether they provide maps, illustrations and/or period paintings to help visuals all the text. While excited to read Trafalgar its lack of all of these made me return the book. Perhaps the Kindle (Unlimited) version is a fault

[Allan Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Fabulous Tale

One of the best books I’ve ever read. The author has a great gift for painting word pictures of the main characters, life in the Navy back then and of the sea battles. He brought all of this to life so cleverly that it was easy to picture everything in my mind. A fabulous tale and a fabulous work of writing.

[Steve Dowdney · Rating 5 out of 5]

If history books were as well written as Trafalgar I might have gotten an A instead of a C-!
Loved the book and the way it was presented. Beautifully written to boot! Little did I know the famous battle saved England and her people from French conquest. No wonder there is a Trafalgar/Nelson shrine in front of Buckingham Palace and HMS Victory is maintained to perfection as a maritime museum.

[Brian Seibel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written history

The Battle of Trafalgar and its lead-up is beautifully described in enough detail.to mke it both interesting and very informative. The writing makes the men (and women) of the period come alive with their hopes and fears and the very real threat of a French invasion of England and how that would have.completely changed world history. Very well.done

[Daniel J. Osnato · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic read

Exceptionally well written account of a never to be forgotten story of unimaginable bravery, cowardice,egomaniacal leadership,victory and loss on the seas with remarkable eye witness accounting that was relentlessly gripping .

[Robert Bottome · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gripping yet meticulous

Drawing on an impressive set of contemporary sources, Best manages to recreate the time and the many relevant places before walking us through the events of that day and the immediate aftermath -- both epic and tragic