The anatomy of a hero

The first word of Edgar Vincent’s biography of Nelson is not encouraging. It is ‘Jump!’, which is what a sailor is supposed to have shouted to young Horatio as he boarded the boat that was to take him out to his first ship. How does Mr Vincent know that the sailor shouted that? He might have said, ‘Mind the gap.’ Happily this is the only invented dialogue and only occasionally does the author let his imagination loose in describing how somebody walked, or seabirds wheeled, or what a gun-deck looked like after receiving a broadside. He uses colloquialisms, too: spin, networking and icon, but, in the context, these are appropriate.

Almost all other quotations come from printed sources – particularly the voluminous Nicolas and Morrison collections – but this is not to say that there is little that is new. Most will come fresh to his readers and a little documentary research adds spice, such as Countess Spencer’s worries about Nelson: ‘The dear little creature puts me in a fidgit about his health’, from the Althorp Papers in the British Library.