Horatio Lord Nelson (Historic Lives)

Rating:
Summary: Wouldn't recommend
Review: I'm more than halfway through this, and would not recommend it. Perhaps Lavery's other titles on Nelson are better-- this one almost seems like an ignorant editor just ripped out sentences & paragraphs from a longer work & put this out as an excerpted work. The writing is clumsy and often unclear throughout; points aren't made that should be; and the overall tone is too hagiographic to represented a balanced study, even as a sketch of Nelson's life.
Nice packaging, though, and some good artwork and battle/harbor scene prints from Pocock & the Naval Archives. But even many of these are too small to make much use of.

Rating:
Summary: Wouldn't recommend
Review: I'm more than halfway through this, and would not recommend it. Perhaps Lavery's other titles on Nelson are better-- this one almost seems like an ignorant editor just ripped out sentences & paragraphs from a longer work & put this out as an excerpted work. The writing is clumsy and often unclear throughout; points aren't made that should be; and the overall tone is too hagiographic to represented a balanced study, even as a sketch of Nelson's life.
Nice packaging, though, and some good artwork and battle/harbor scene prints from Pocock & the Naval Archives. But even many of these are too small to make much use of.

Rating:
Summary: LAVERY'S A FINE SCHOLAR BUT BIOGRAPHY'S NOT HIS THING
Review: I've read and loved several of Brian Lavery's book, but I do think he's far better at describing ships, shipbuilding and naval institutions than he is at describing people and explaining their psychologies. As a general assessment of Nelson's life this is all pretty average and not at all novel. But it does introduce readers to all the key events in the admiral's life and might well prompt them to read more thorough works. Because I like Lavery's works I don't want to be negative, but I have to say that, while this is good enough, when dealing with Nelson we now expect excellence from our writers.

Rating:
Summary: Mrs LLoyd's review below is spot-on.
Review: This is very much a book for readers UNfamiliar with Nelson's life. They'll learn a lot from this book and will hopefully then feel inspired to read some of the exciting new studies of HN. Even so, many readers ARE novices who needs such a book as this, so for them I say "get this book".