From two of the UK's finest naval biographers is an immensely human portrait of Nelson, the most brilliant and famous naval commander in British history. Nelson was a myriad of contradictions - humble yet ambitious, kind but sometimes petulant, charming but vain and self-pitying, dutiful yet involved in a scandalous love-affair - and the Howarths have captured not only the traits of the great man but also those of his time, evoking a remarkable sense of what it was like to sail the seas in Nelson's day, in peace and war. The pivotal battles of St Vincent, the Nile, and Copenhagen spring to life, as do the achievements of the blockading fleet off the French coast in the months and years before the victory at Trafalgar - a victory so decisive and devastating that it put an end to war at sea for a century.