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John Terraine has written a brilliant and fresh account of the most famous naval battle in British history. This is the story not just of the morning and afternoon in which Nelson and Collingwood smashed the combined fleets of France and Spain. It is the story of a complex campaign, of which Trafalgar was the climax.
The two main protagonists in the book are not Villeneuve and Nelson, but Napoleon and the British naval tradition. The situation was in many ways similar to 1940. Across the English Channel a huge invasion army was massing. Britain's armed forces were no match in numbers for the superb formations of the French. But just as in 1940, the Spitfires and Hurricanes of the Royal Air Force, working to a well-conceived plan, foiled Hitler's invasion, so in 1805 the Royal Navy's ships of the line, also working to a plan, shattered Napoleon's dreams of riding triumphantly into London.
Amplifying the account of the battle of Trafalgar is a lengthy selection of contemporary eye witness-accounts specially compiled for the book, some never before published.
The book is superbly illustrated in black and white and colour, and provides a completely new visual dimension to the battle.

John Terraine was born in London in 1921 and was educated at Stamford School. After leaving Keble College, Oxford, he went to the B.B.C. where he worked for the next twenty years. In 1944 he became a producer of Radio Newsreel, one of the B.B.C.'s most famous programmes. He broadened his field of activities in 1952 by becoming Pacific and South African Programme Organiser, and it was at this time that he was able to develop his long-standing interest in documentary production.
In 1959 he wrote his first book, MONS : THE RETREAT TO VICTORY, which was followed by DOUGLAS HAIG: THE EDUCATED SOLDIER and an ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR. In 1963 he worked on the famous television series THE GREAT WAR, for which he received the Screenwriters' Guild Documentary Award for 1964. He then worked on THE LOST PEACE and THE LIFE AND TIMES OF LORD MOUNTBATTEN. His most famous contribution to television is the thirteen part series THE MIGHTY CONTINENT which he wrote and narrated. His other titles include THE WESTERN FRONT, GENERAL JACK'S DIARY and IMPACTS OF WAR 1914 AND 1918.