From the dust jacket. No naval officer since Nelson has come so close to his magical combination of personal and professional qualities as David, first Earl Beatty. Like Nelson Beatty captured the imagination of the general public, besides inspiring a passionate loyalty in those who served with him.

Like Nelson, he did not come from a rich or eminent family but quickly won his way to the front by his daring and panache. Like him he was a thorough master of the theory and technique of his profession, a bold tactician, a cool headed strategist, as well as a fighting leader who did not know what fear was. Like him he made a romantic but ultimately unhappy marriage, in this case to the fabulously rich heiress to the Marshall Field fortunes.

Like Nelson, too, it is now revealed that he fell deeply in love with the wife of a colleague and friend. But there the resemblance ends. The secret was well kept. The feelings of others were spared. Privacy, not publicity, was the heartfelt desire of both parties.

Captain Roskill is the first historian to have had full access to the intimate correspondence that tells better than anything else can what Beatty as Commander in Chief first of the Battle Cruisers and then of the Grand Fleet was thinking and feeling in the crucial years of the First World War. He is also the only writer to have had the advantage of consulting Sir Shane Leslie’s suppressed biography and to have discussed it with its author.