Jutland is the most studied of all naval battles, but the results have, until recently, been less impressive than their bulk might imply. Too many authors have tried to decide who ‘won’ a tactical stalemate that did not change the strategic situation. Although Sir Julian Corbett made these points in the 1923 Official History Naval Operations: Volume III , his successors lost sight of the bigger picture, and approached the action with partisan agendas. For two decades Jutland was studied as a Staff College exercise, by navies anxious to learn lessons, and by participants and contemporaries, seeking to apportion blame, or claim credit. Everything hinged on a few key moments, decisions made by four Admirals, and the brief encounters of capital ships. The place of the battle in the wider war was lost amidst the controversy and the fine grained focus. In Britain, America and Japan the battle was replayed, key lessons included the Royal Navy’s mastery of night fighting and the recovery of initiative led tactics. While Churchill coined the memorable phrase that Jellicoe could have lost the war in an afternoon in his The World Crisis , recognising the larger context, his account of the battle was deeply flawed, based on a discredited account the Dewar brothers produced to serve David Beatty’s agenda. After 1945 Jutland moved into history, as big gun capital ships passed out of service. But the battle over Jutland remained fierce, and narrowly focused. The historical giants of the 1950s and 1960s, Arthur J. Marder and Stephen Roskill went to war over authority and interpretation on this subject. Marder rewrote his account, Roskill disagreed. Yet beyond the heavy gun exchanges little new work was done. There were other questions to answer: were the cruiser and destroyer forces integrated into the tactical concept, why were the fleets at sea on that day, how did their movements fit into the wider war in mid-1916, and what was British strategy in the theatre on the eve of the battle? The centenary provided an opportunity to revisit the battle, engage with wider perspectives and challenge the historiographical dominance of the Western Front.

International Journal of Nautical ArchaeologyVolume 46, Issue 2 p. 471-472 Review British Expeditionary Warfare and the Defeat of Napoleon, 1793–1815 , ROBERT K. SUTCLIFFE xxii & 272 pp., illustrations, maps, diagrams, The Boydell Press, 2016, £75 (hbk), ISBN 978-1843839491 ANDREW LAMBERT, ANDREW LAMBERT War Studies, Kings College, LondonSearch for more papers by this author ANDREW LAMBERT, ANDREW LAMBERT War Studies, Kings College, LondonSearch for more papers by this author First published: 30 August 2017 https://doi.org/10.1111/1095-9270.12252Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume46, Issue2September 2017Pages 471-472 RelatedInformation

Book synopsis: HMS Dreadnought (1906) is closely associated with the age of empire, the Anglo-German antagonism and the naval arms race before the First World War. Yet it was also linked with a range of other contexts - political and cultural, national and international - that were central to the Edwardian period. The chapters in this volume investigate these contexts and their intersection in this symbolically charged icon of the Edwardian age. In reassessing the most famous warship of the period, this collection not only considers the strategic and operational impact of this 'all big gun' battleship, but also explores the many meanings Dreadnought had in politics and culture, including national and imperial sentiment, gender relations and concepts of masculinity, public spectacle and images of technology, and ideas about modernity and decline. The volume brings together historians from different backgrounds, working on naval and technological history, politics and international relations, as well as culture and gender. This diverse approach to the subject ensures that the book offers a timely revision of the Dreadnought and the Edwardian Age.'

International Journal of Nautical ArchaeologyVolume 45, Issue 2 p. 476-477 Review The British Battleship: 1906–1946 NORMAN FRIEDMAN 448 pp., large format, more than 1000 b&w figures, colour section of original ship's plans, maps Seaforth Publishing, Barnsley, S70 2AS UK, 2015, £45 (hbk), ISBN 978-1848322257 ANDREW LAMBERT, ANDREW LAMBERT King's College LondonSearch for more papers by this author ANDREW LAMBERT, ANDREW LAMBERT King's College LondonSearch for more papers by this author First published: 29 August 2016 https://doi.org/10.1111/1095-9270.12197Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume45, Issue2September 2016Pages 476-477 RelatedInformation

The role of British naval forces in the politics and conflicts of the Baltic region from Cromwell to George VI is a promising theme, but as Grainger observes, the Baltic is shallow, studded with rocks and pinnacles, much of it freezes over in winter, and it is only brackish, meaning ships float deeper into the water than they do on the open ocean. Furthermore British experience of this challenging navigation, even though it did stretch back to the Anglo– Saxons, was thin, and resided in the heads of merchant skippers who, despite the author’s contention, tended to focus on specific port to port routes. To make matters worse the Baltic is a sea of choke points, starting with the Danish Narrows, often heavily fortified, while major regional powers, Russia and later Imperial Germany, possessed massive internal resources, making them relatively invulnerable to short term naval power. It was not an obvious theatre in which to apply sea power. Instead it was the pull factor of trade dependence that brought the British to the Baltic. British naval and commercial shipping depended on key naval stores, tar, pitch, flax, and hemp from the sixteenth century, while Baltic grain was the obvious source when the domestic harvest proved inadequate. By the eighteenth century Britain was also dependant on Baltic timber, critically masts and oak plank. This growing dependence obliged Britain to take an active interest in Baltic politics, to prevent any one power from controlling these strategic raw materials, or the Danish Narrows through which all shipping had to pass. These efforts reached a high point in major Baltic campaigns between 1807 and 1812. The critical role of trade is essential to understanding the dramatic flipflop of British Baltic policy in the latter stages of the Great Northern War, when fleets were despatched to block Swedish and then Russian attempts to control trade, and finally to help secure peaceful conditions for trade. This situation endured until the early nineteenth century, when the harsh experience of 1807–1812 prompted the Government to develop alternative sources of supply, notably in Canada, by tariff preference. This transformed Britain’s strategic appreciation of the Baltic. In the Anglo–Russian standoff of the 1830s Palmerston secured unfettered naval access to the Baltic, Denmark

International Journal of Nautical ArchaeologyVolume 43, Issue 1 p. 199-201 Book Review British Battleships of World War One (new revised edition) by Burt, Ray 352 pp., full-colour endpapers, b&w and colour illustrations, photographs, camouflage schemes Seaforth Publishing Ltd., 47 Church Street, Barnsley S70 3AS, 2012, £45 (hbk), ISBN 978-1848321472 British Battleships 1919–1945 (new revised edition) by Burt, Ray 432 pp., full-colour endpapers, b&w and colour illustrations, photographs, camouflage schemes Seaforth Publishing Ltd. (as above), 2012, £45 (hbk), ISBN 978-1848321304 Andrew Lambert, Andrew Lambert War Studies, King's College London, EnglandSearch for more papers by this author Andrew Lambert, Andrew Lambert War Studies, King's College London, EnglandSearch for more papers by this author First published: 10 February 2014 https://doi.org/10.1111/1095-9270.12050Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume43, Issue1March 2014Pages 199-201 RelatedInformation