Ifigured it was high time that BAW profiled one of the Royal Navy’s greatest flag officers: Admiral of the Fleet Andrew Browne Cunningham.
Sometimes, as editor, it is difficult to ensure every article we run gets its due. Pages are finite and pages are precious, but when it comes to a figure such as Cunningham you can never have too many, so do have a read of Allan George’s biographical feature on the man likened to Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson.
I don't believe it a stretch to say ‘ABC’ Cunningham was – and remains – one of Britain’s foremost fighting sailors. In occupying the Italian fleet and repeatedly defeating it, springing an audacious raid heralding a transformation in how naval warfare would be fought, overseeing two major evacuations, and supporting Malta and the Eighth Army, there are few who did more than Cunningham to win the Mediterranean and facilitate the Axis collapse in North Africa during World War Two.
Continuing that maritime theme, Graham Goodlad examines three of your favourite Battle of the Atlantic-themed novels – The Cruel Sea, The Enemy Below and The Good Shepherd – and their respective film adaptations to discover how the varied perspectives of each author shaped their harrowing and powerful narratives.
Elsewhere, Daniel Knowles charts the Special Service Cruise through a detailed article starting in late 1923, when the battlecruisers Hood and Repulse left on an 11-month world tour. The sight of two of the most powerful warships afloat, implicitly ranging wherever they pleased, must have have been quite something and hundreds of thousands of people turned out to see them. However, Britain’s ambassadors with 15in guns were also a visual representation of might, reminding friend and foe alike of its prowess on the waves.…
