Oxford Literary Festival

Date Posted: 12/03/2013

I am delighted to announce that I will be talking on Saturday 16 March at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival. The venue is Christ Church and I will be starting at six pm blunt. I will be talking about my new book, ‘In the Hour of Victory’ and the extraordinary collection of naval dispatches upon which it is based. The dispatches cover the main British naval victories of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.

In the early nineteenth century they were collected by the Lords of the Admiralty and presented to the nation in a magnificent navy-blue velvet bound book, as a permanent reminder of how British seapower influenced those years of war. And then they were forgotten… I hope also to have a debate about access to such treasures in our national collection. These dispatches were gathered together so everyone could read them, and now they are only accessible to researchers and scholars. Let me know what you think on Saturday and if you can’t come, then make sure that you comment online here!