Extract

It can seem as though no aspect of Winston Churchill's life and career has been left unexplored, with books constantly appearing that cover topics both serious (Churchill's very lucrative career as a writer) and light (what he talked about at dinner and where he shopped). However, as Christopher M. Bell points out in his introduction, when Churchill's career is looked at closely, there is a remarkable amount that has not yet been subjected to serious scholarly study. One such area, rather surprisingly, is his long connection with the Royal Navy in peace and war. There has been little of substance on this subject since the work of Arthur J. Marder (the From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow series [1961–1970]) and Captain S. W. Roskill (Churchill and the Admirals [1977]) a generation ago—and nothing since Churchill's own papers became available. Here Bell addresses, for the first time, Churchill and the navy over the half-century and more of his remarkable career, making this book both a study of an important chapter in the Churchill story and a history of the slow erosion of Britain's once-dominant sea power over the first half of the twentieth century.

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