Since his retirement as a senior manager from ICI, Edgar Vincent has been researching and writing about Horatio Nelson. He first became interested in Nelson during his own service in the British Royal Navy four decades ago.
“Easily the best biography of Nelson I’ve ever read, a superb,
fully rigged 74-gun ship of a book.”—Andrew Roberts
“Nelson: Love and Fame has the potential to prove a great success,
to be very popular indeed, and to establish itself as the fullest
and best life of Nelson for a generation.”—Rory Muir, author of
Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon
"Easily the best biography of Nelson I've ever read, a superb,
fully rigged 74-gun ship of a book."-Andrew Roberts
"Nelson: Love and Fame has the potential to prove a great success,
to be very popular indeed, and to establish itself as the fullest
and best life of Nelson for a generation."-Rory Muir, author of
Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon
The approaching bicentennial of the Battle of Trafalgar has inspired a number of books on the Royal Navy and its great admiral Horatio Nelson (1758-1805). Retired business executive Vincent follows a long and successful tradition of British writers who are neither academicians nor professionals with this comprehensive biography. Making extensive use of archival and published sources, Vincent provides a perceptive, empathetic analysis of a man who throughout his life focused talent and energy on the pursuit of ambition and self-presentation. Vincent's Nelson did not just seek love and fame; he equated them. At the age of 18 he consciously decided to be a hero, and his strong point remained self-confidence. Nelson increasingly identified his personal interests with the public welfare. He was prone to histrionics and inordinately fond of the first person singular. Yet at the same time he incorporated, to a degree unusual for military officers at any period, the virtues of communication, negotiation and collaboration. Vincent makes the telling point that, far from being the rule-breaking innovator of many accounts, Nelson was an organization man and a skilled player of navy politics, able to mobilize support for even his high-risk operations. He cultivated a charismatic personality to win the hearts and minds of his fellow officers, eventually succeeding in welding a group of standoffish, individualistic captains into a "band of brothers." Initially unsuccessful with women, Nelson was fortunate in his eventual relationship with Emma Hamilton. Far from being the embarrassing encumbrance of some saltier biographies, she emerges here as meeting Nelson's need for unconditional acceptance in a way that freed his formidable powers to concentrate fully on the professional achievements that earned him immortality-ironically, at the expense of his loved ones' welfare and well-being. Vincent's Nelson, for good and ill, would have made the same choice consciously, without hesitation. (May) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
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