A Naval History of Britain 660-1649

The Safeguard of the Sea

'No other historian has examined the subject in anything like the detail found here. The result is an outstanding example of narrative history' Barry Unsworth, Sunday Telegraph

The importance of this book is not only in its intrinsic interest, or its usefulness as a superb resource, but its demonstration that this island’s story cannot be told without a thorough knowledge of what happened at sea. The book teems with insights … It is a serious contribution to our history

Remarkable … will be read and reread in the years ahead … I strongly recommend it

Stunning … One of the most erudite, well-written and intellectually impressive works on British history of the past decade … There is nothing quite like it, in fact, nothing remotely approaching it

An outstanding example of narrative history

N.A.M. Rodger is Professor of Naval History at Exeter University and Anderson Senior Research Fellow, National Maritime Museum. He is the author of The Wooden World and The Admiralty. The second volume of his naval history of Britain, The Command of the Ocean, is published this month by Allen Lane.

Throughout Britain's history, one factor above all others has determined the fate of the nation: its navy. N. A. M. Rodger's definitive account reveals how the political and social progress of Britain has been inextricably intertwined with the strength - and weakness - of its sea power, from the desperate early campaigns against the Vikings to the defeat of the great Spanish Armada. Covering policy, strategy, ships, recruitment and weapons, this is a superb tapestry of nearly 1,000 years of maritime history. 
 
'No other historian has examined the subject in anything like the detail found here. The result is an outstanding example of narrative history' Barry Unsworth, Sunday Telegraph

A Naval History of Britain: 1815 – 1945

The Price of Victory

Praise for THE COMMAND OF THE OCEAN: I have never reviewed a book that has given me more pleasure … a masterpiece

Praise for THE COMMAND OF THE OCEAN: A great work of history … A truly satisfying book that one puts down with regret … Nothing written during the past century, perhaps ever, approaches N. A. M. Rodger’s ambitious and masterly three-volume Naval History of Britain … it is likely to be regarded as one of the greatest works of historical scholarship of our age

Praise for THE COMMAND OF THE OCEAN: Magisterial … triumphantly succeeds in moving the Royal Navy back to centre-stage in our islands’ story

Praise for THE COMMAND OF THE OCEAN: Quite outstanding

The Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year

The Price of Victory is the third and final volume of Rodger’s great history of British sea power. It covers a period of astonishing modernisation from just after Nelson to the end of the Second World War. Sail is replaced by steam; timber by steel; “rum, sodomy and the lash” and the press gang give way to a volunteer Navy, albeit one whose officers are lacking until training becomes more sophisticated. Rodger stresses the paradox that early 19th-century statesmen “were at pains to avoid” the idea of empire, yet the empire was what the Navy helped to build and secure. Submarines and the Fleet Air Arm arrived, and by the 1940s the Navy could act effectively with American allies in the Pacific – and to defend Britain in the Battle of the Atlantic.

N. A. M. Rodger is Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and former Professor of Naval History at the University of Exeter. He has been awarded the Julian Corbett Prize in Naval History, the Duke of Westminster’s Medal for Military Literature, the British Academy Book prize, the Hattendorf Prize, and the Caird Medal of the National Maritime Museum.

At the end of the French and Napoleonic wars, British sea-power was at its apogee. But by 1840, the Admiralty was full of ‘intellects becalmed in the smoke of Trafalgar’. How the Royal Navy reformed and reinvigorated itself in the course of the nineteenth century is just one thread in this magnificent book, the culmination of one of the most admired British historical works in recent decades. 
 
The book is based on a lifetime’s learning, and refuses to accept standard assumptions and analyses. Naval specialists will find much that is new, and will be invigorated by the originality of Rodger’s judgements; but everyone who is interested in the one of the central threads in British history will find it rewarding.

N A M Rodger

I have never reviewed a book that has given me more pleasure … a masterpiece

A great work of history … A truly satisfying book that one puts down with regret … Nothing written during the past century, perhaps ever, approaches N. A. M. Rodger’s ambitious and masterly three-volume Naval History of Britain … it is likely to be regarded as one of the greatest works of historical scholarship of our age

Magisterial … triumphantly succeeds in moving the Royal Navy back to centre-stage in our islands’ story

Stunning … By the time the book closes there is no doubt who holds command

Monumental … Rodger is our finest naval historian

Exciting and original … Here is that rarest of all historians, the expert with the generalist’s approach

Truly in a class of its own … at turns witty, provocative and incisive … you finish it wishing for more

Scholarly and erudite, but also a thrilling story, told with wit and verve

Splendid … There is plenty of old-fashioned narrative in this encyclopaedic blockbuster … the writing advances across the pages like a squadron of dreadnoughts

An enterprise of truly stupendous scope and erudition … Even the annotated bibliography, with its deadpan, often savage comments, is a pleasure to read

N. A. M. Rodger is the doyen of naval scholars … This is an excellent book

A Naval History of Britain 1649-1815

The Command of the Ocean describes with unprecedented authority and scholarship the rise of Britain to naval greatness, and the central place of the Navy and naval activity in the life of the nation and government. It describes not just battles, voyages and cruises but how the Navy was manned, how it was supplied with timber, hemp and iron, how its men (and sometimes women) were fed, and above all how it was financed and directed. It was during the century and a half covered by this book that the successful organizing of these last three - victualling, money and management - took the Navy to the heart of the British state. It is the great achievement of the book to show how completely integrated and mutually dependent Britain and the Navy then became.

N A M Rodger

Praise for The Command of the Ocean

I have never reviewed a book that has given me more pleasure … a masterpiece

A great work of history … A truly satisfying book that one puts down with regret … Nothing written during the past century, perhaps ever, approaches N. A. M. Rodger’s ambitious and masterly three-volume Naval Histor ...

Magisterial … triumphantly succeeds in moving the Royal Navy back to centre-stage in our islands’ story

I have never reviewed a book that has given me more pleasure … a masterpiece

A great work of history … A truly satisfying book that one puts down with regret … Nothing written during the past century, perhaps ever, approaches N. A. M. Rodger’s ambitious and masterly three-volume Naval Histor ...

Magisterial … triumphantly succeeds in moving the Royal Navy back to centre-stage in our islands’ story

I have never reviewed a book that has given me more pleasure … a masterpiece

A great work of history … A truly satisfying book that one puts down with regret … Nothing written during the past century, perhaps ever, approaches N. A. M. Rodger’s ambitious and masterly three-volume Naval Histor ...

Magisterial … triumphantly succeeds in moving the Royal Navy back to centre-stage in our islands’ story

Books by N A M Rodger

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