Horatio Nelson: the national hero who secured a century of maritime supremacy for his country and became the focus of British identity and aspirations. Generous and brave, sometimes vain and occasionally weak, he is still the butt of half­admiring jokes: bawdy when his name is coupled with that of Emma Hamilton; respectful in relation to his great naval achievements.

Tom Pocock's Horatio Nelson is the first biography of the admiral to include a significant and hitherto unpublished account of Nelson's plans for a new career in politics. It is the first full biography to unveil detailed descriptions of his adventures on an expedition to the Arctic as a boy, his exploits in the Nicaraguan jungle as a young captain, his love for an older officer's pretty and sophisticated young wife in the West Indies and his defence in court of one of his men on a murder charge and of an old friend charged with treason and plotting the murder of the King. Including an appendix of existing Nelsonian sites in addition to many photographs and quotations from letters unpublished until now, this biography also grants us an intimate glimpse, seen through the eyes of Nelson's young niece,

of life with Nelson and the Hamiltons at Merton Place, the home they shared.

The most revealing study yet written, this biography juxtaposes details of Nelson's daily life, friendships and opinions with the great events which make him one of the best loved and most memorable figures in British history.

`Tom Pocock's biography of Horatio Nelson is written with obvious authority. It takes us through his life from birth to death, not only with a wealth of new detail but also with a richness of quotation from contemporary letters and papers which dramatically points up the detail. The book should have as much appeal to the general reader as

to those with a knowledge of the naval history of the times.'

Peter Kemp, the leading naval historian and editor of the Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea.