Fighting Sail

Fighting Sail covers the half-century or so up to and including the Battle of Trafalgar. Perhaps Whipple can be criticised for his Anglo-centric bias, but a certain slant was inevitable - this was the golden age of the Royal Navy. Their mighty ships-of-the-line ruled the oceans, and no figure stood taller (metaphorically speaking) than the flawed, captivating Horatio Nelson. A certain concentration on the details of his life and career cannot be avoided.

It's a desperate shame that Time Life no longer produce books like this. Personally, The Seafarers is my favourite Time Life series. Handsomely bound, richly detailed and superbly illustrated, it vividly evokes faraway places, distant times, and the characters that inhabited them. These books captured my imagination when my seafaring father purchased them more than 30 years later, and they still inhabit a proud position on my straining bookshelves.

A third generation, my 12-year-old son, is reading Fighting Sail right now, as a primer ahead of tackling Forester's Hornblower series.