Author Description

JOHN ARBUTHNOT FISHER, First Baron Fisher of Kilverstone in Norfolk, has been called the greatest British admiral since Nelson. This is the definitive biography of the creator of the Dreadnought and founder of the modern British navy. His life is an astonishing story, one crowded with the excitement of history in the making, with a central character who zestfully seized every opportunity that life offered to leave his mark upon his times. Fisher "was a man of deep passions, strong beliefs and limitless ambition and patriotism. He was brave, impetuous, impatient; brusque and even vindictive with his opponents and with those who failed to match up to the standards he set for himself.... He adored all beautiful women.... Women loved him in return, for his vigour and decisiveness and charm. He could also electrify a committee of hard-bitten politicians, and renew the batteries of a minister as young and vibrant as Winston Churchill, or as old as Lord Salisbury. "In an age when the grip of patronage and privilege was still exclusive and tenacious, Fisher brashly fought his way through to become at the age of sixty-three the controller of the most powerful single force of destruction in the world, and on familiar terms with the influential at home and the crowned heads of Europe." In these words Richard Hough, whose maritime writing is familiar to readers of The New Yorker and to serious students of naval history, opens his Preface to the first full-length study (for which all the family and official records have been made available) of the Royal Navy's greatest figure of recent times. It is fitting that this important, revealing, and often deeply moving biography should appear shortly before the fiftieth anniversary of Fisher's death, and at a time when, once again, the protective power of Britain's Navy is being put in jeopardy.