First and foremost, it is full of original research, united by the goal of returning to primary sources and recovering unpublished correspondence, and to re-discover neglected lives and iconographies. We follow in Nelson’s footsteps as he navigates the Admiralty buildings; we can accompany brave junior officers as they wait there, increasingly desperate, on half-pay; we join local militia men as they prepare for foreign invasion, and others as they plan for an amphibious landing on a hostile coast. We consider some of the logistics involved in feeding them. We join the search for missing Nelsonian relics; enjoy mock naval battles in grand country estates; observe a painter at his easel working on his canvas. We meet Churchill in his private cinema as he watches Olivier stride stoically across his screen; we climb a column high above the capital to interview a mason applying pioneering techniques of ‘stone dentistry’to restore a weathered Nelson to his former glory. There is much else besides, and if some may be disappointed to discover that reviews are no longer included here, please note, it is instead our intention that the Club’s website www.admiralnelson.org will soon become the forum for a range of book reviews, where members will be invited to offer their own appraisals of the literature of maritime history. Making the website active in this way, we hope to bring a variety of voices to the table, and to make it far easier for members to share knowledge and enthusiasm for the books we all read. Thus, enthusiasm continues unabated, after the excitement of a bicentenary year. There are many new stories to be recovered, many new memorials to be restored, and much, much more research to be done in all aspects of our maritime history. Let us beat down Channel in full sail with the wind at our backs. Anthony Cross Huw Lewis-Jones vii Greenwich Pensioners at the Tomb of Lord Nelson. Engraving after Sir J.E. Millais, circa 1895. Courtesy:Warwick Leadlay Gallery.
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