Churchill and the Admirals

London: Collins, 1978. Presumed First U. K. Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Very good. 351, [1] pages. Footnotes. Illustrations. Maps. Appendix. Notes and Sources. Index. Ink name on fep. Captain Stephen Wentworth Roskill, CBE, DSC, FBA, (1 August 1903-4 November 1982) was a career officer in the Royal Navy, serving during the Second World War and later served as the official historian of the Royal Navy from 1949 to 1960. He is remembered as a prodigious author of books on British maritime history. Stephen Roskill attended the Britannia Royal Naval College at Dartmouth. Roskill, in 1936, was given the prize gunnery appointment in the navy, that of the newly reconstructed dreadnought Warspite. He was the senior British observer at the Bikini Atomic tests in 1946, and served as Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence, 1946-48 before retiring as a captain. His three volume work The War at Sea was published between 1954 and 1961. In 1961, he was elected a senior research fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. He was elected a vice president of the Navy Records Society. In this masterful work, Roskill argues that Churchill never fully grasped the nuances of naval warfare, falling back, instead, on strategic concepts better suited to land war. The disastrous results stretched from the famous Dardanelles fiasco of World War I to the single-minded emphasis on the bombing of Germany in World War II, and reflected Churchill's preference for offensive strategy. Churchill was reluctant to initiate reforms in strategic planning or to accept other strong personalities in key positions, preventing alternative strategies from developing. Roskill credits Churchill with providing the energy and resolve which helped pull the British through World War II, even though his determination often had to compensate for his own mistakes. Roskill's work is analytical, with each decision, non-decision, and battle expertly judged and evaluated. His thorough, even-handed appraisals, and scholarly skills makes this an eye-opening account of the impact of individuals on history.