Engage the Enemy More Closely: The Royal Navy in the Second World War - Hardcover

Correlli Barnett is a world-renowned historian with particular prowess in military, naval, economic and social subjects. Faber Finds are reissuing his four volume The Pride and Fall sequence: The Collapse of British Power, The Audit of War, The Lost Victory, The Verdict of Peace, as well as The Swordbearers, Britain and her Army, 1509-1970 (winner of the Royal Society of Literature Heinemann Award) and Engage the Enemy More Closely (winner of the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award).

This is the story of the heroic twilight of a fleet and an empire. The Royal Navy of 1939 was the creation of governments that had hoped in vain for security on the cheap. From Norway to Crete and from Singapore to the Atlantic, the Royal Navy fought a rearguard action for a Britain no longer able to fulfill its imperial obligations. Only with the U.S. entry into the war in 1941 were British admirals able to take time to prepare strategies and concentrate forces--albeit as the junior partner of the Grand Alliance. Barnett is a superb narrator as well as a perceptive analyst. He tells a series of gripping stories relatively unfamiliar to American readers: the destroyer raid on Narvik, the epic battle of the Malta convoys, the airstrike against Taranto that crippled Italy's battle fleet. He pays tribute to sailors as well as admirals. The junior officers and men who crewed the ships that won superiority on the Atlantic, and in Europe's coastal waters, were worthy successors to the victors of Trafalgar. Never in its long history has the Royal Navy performed more gallantly and effectively than in World War II. Recommended for all collections.
- Dennis E. Showalter, Colorado Coll., Colorado Springs
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.