Jacket flaps blurb

Engage the Enemy More Closely presents a challengingly novel interpretation of Britain's wartime role as an island seapower and the mother country of a worldwide Empire. Correlli Barnett demonstrates that the British Empire, with its oceanic communications, was less a source of strength to Britain than of weakness. He shows that Britain's dependence on seaborne imports of food, raw materials and American technology was also a liability and how the brunt of this and of Britain's global predicament fell upon the Royal Navy — but a Navy far too small for its tasks owing to the disarmament of the 1920s and the belated rearmament of the 1930s.

Engage the Enemy More Closely ranges from high- level debates in London and Washington over grand strategy to gripping descriptions of the Royal Navy in action: its remorseless struggle against the U-boat in the Atlantic; its hunt for the battleship Bismarck; the `death-ride' of the Mediterranean Fleet off Greece and Crete in 1941; the desperate convoy battles in the Mediterranean and the Arctic; the tragic fate of the Prince of Wales and Repulse off Malaya at the hands of Japanese aircraft. Into this story the author weaves the rivalry between Allied and German technology in weapons and radar; and the all- important secret war of the cryptographers. He shows too how the Royal Navy's strategic overstretch was compounded by Britain's industrial shortcomings, especially the limited output of her obsolete shipyards, but increasingly assisted by cooperation with the US Navy.

Correlli Barnett devastatingly indicts the British Air Staff for its doctrinaire reluctance to divert long-range aircraft to the vital Battle of the Atlantic from the indecisive bomber offensive against German cities. Another major and controversial theme of the book lies in the author's criticism of Winston Churchill's direct interventions in naval operations and his pursuit of strategic fantasies — such as the Norwegian campaign in 1940 — in defiance of military reality. Correlli Barnett also contends that the 'blue water' strategy pursued by Britain (later by America too) in the Mediterranean demanded resources of shipping, warships and military personnel out of all proportion to the small German armies actually engaged in North Africa and Italy.

This is a book of tremendous scope and insight, compellingly readable and massively researched, placing the course of the Second World War in fresh perspective. But above all it is the story of the British sailor's endurance in the face of all hardships and his courage in the face of all dangers and of any odds. It is the story of a Navy that began the war with expectations of another Battle of Jutland between massed battlefleets, but which went on to launch the first carrier strike in history, and ended by master-minding the greatest and most complex combined operation ever, the landing of the Allied Expeditionary force on the Normandy beaches on 6 June 1944. It is the story of a Navy that remained throughout steadfastly true to the spirit of Nelson's last signal at the Battle of Trafalgar: 'Engage the enemy
more closely'.

The author
CORRELLI BARNETT has written many distinguished, and controversial, books including The Desert Generals, The Swordbearers, Britain and her Army, The Collapse of British. Power and The Audit of War. He has also written biographies of Marlborough and Bonaparte. Since 1977 he has been Keeper of the Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Historical Society.