Quintin Colville – författare

How the Royal Navy saw off the U-boat challenge in the Great War, and the daily lives of its sailors.In 1914 Great Britain’s navy was the largest and most powerful the world had ever seen – but what was the everyday experience of those who served in it? This fully illustrated book looks at the British sailor’s life during the First World War, from the Falkland Islands to the East African coast and the North Sea. Meals in the stokers’ mess and the admiral’s cabin; the claustrophobic terrors of the engine room or submarine; the long separations from loved ones that were the shared experience of all ranks; the perils faced by Royal Naval Air Service pilots – drawing on previously unpublished materials from the National Maritime Museum collections, this is an authoritative and vivid account of lives lived in quite extraordinary circumstances.

A New Naval History brings together the most significant and interdisciplinary approaches to contemporary naval history. The last few decades have witnessed a transformation in how this field is researched and understood and this volume captures the state of a field that continues to develop apace. It examines – through the prism of naval affairs – issues of nationhood and imperialism; the legacy of Nelson; the socio-cultural realities of life in ships and naval bases; and the processes of commemoration, journalism and stage-managed pageantry that plotted the interrelationship of ship and shore. This bold and original publication will be essential for undergraduate and postgraduate students of naval and maritime history. Beyond that, though, it marks an important intervention into wider historiographies that will be read by scholars from across the spectrum of social history, cultural studies and the analysis of national identity.