Great Harry's Navy

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Sea Fever - Rated
Geoffrey Moorhouse's latest book can only add to his considerable reputation. He sets out to make the case that Henry VIII, through enthusiasm, pride and with a close eye on the power of the Spanish and French threats to Britain's well-being, began the nation's great naval tradition of effective sea-power. The book illuminates life at home and at sea in the Tudor era, contrasting the commonplace brutality of disease and punishment with the extravagant splendour of a cash-strapped Henry's court at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Moorhouse portrays the characters who enabled the transition of naval leadership from landlubberish aristocratic idiocy into a properly organised Admiralty, without which the Drakes, the Frobishers, the Cunninghams and the Nelsons could never have flourished; and there's the rub. This entertaining book could easily be overshadowed by the plethora of Nelsonia that has emerged over the past year. This is too good a work to ignore; what's more, the final chapter gives an insight into the defeat of the Spanish Armada which is much more plausible than the accepted view of its swift drubbing by a laid-back, bowls playing privateeer. Great Harry indeed! This is Great Geoffrey Moorhouse!