The Illustrated Companion to Nelson's Navy by Nicholas Blake

The Illustrated Companion to Nelson's Navy by Nicholas Blake

No other period of history has spawned such a huge fictional oeuvre as the Nelsonic era - Marryat, Forester, Pope, Kent, O'Brian and Donachie are just some of the authors whose heroics are portrayed as sailors in the Royal Navy. Their exploits have fascinated readers in countries all around the world but for many of them the real world of Nelson's navy is a closed book. This book describes in detail every aspect of the navy of that period and seeks to relate it to the novels that are based on its operations and feats in battle. The workings of the admiralty, the design and building of the ships, life on board, food and drink, entertainment, discipline, medicine, fighting tactics, gunnery, seamanship and shiphandling, and merchant fleets and opposing navies are described and explained in succinct texts and illustrated with over 5000 commissioned sketches, maps and diagrams as well as four-colour artwork; throughout there are cross-references to the novels inspired by this great fighting force.

Cecil Day-Lewis, the Poet Laureate, was born in County Laois, Ireland, in 1904. His pseudonym was NICHOLAS BLAKE. After his mother died in 1906, his father raised him in London, with summer vacations spent with family in Wexford. He attended Sherborne School and Wadham College, Oxford, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1927. Blake worked as a teacher to support his poetry writing income, and his first Nigel Strangeways novel, A Matter of Evidence, was published in 1935. Blake went on to create nineteen more crime novels, with Nigel Strangeways appearing in all but four of them, as well as numerous poetry collections and translations.

He worked as a publishing editor in the Ministry of Information during WWII, which he used as the inspiration for the Ministry of Morale in Minute for Murder, and then as an editor and director at Chatto & Windus following the war. In 1968, he was named Poet Laureate, and in 1972, he died at the home of his friend, the novelist Kingsley Amis.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781861760906
ISBN 10	1861760906
Title	The Illustrated Companion to Nelson's Navy
Author	Nicholas Blake
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Greenhill Books
Year published	2000-01-27
Number of pages	208
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.