Gives the reader a front-row seat at both the battle and its aftermath ... Brilliantly original ... O'Keeffe excels at peripheral detail [and] the battle unfolds in glorious technicolour ... By deploying a wide variety of first-hand sources from archives, contemporary accounts and newspapers, O'Keeffe has pulled off the unlikely trick of making this familiar story seem fresh and original. Acutely sensitive to human suffering, he has produced a brilliantly vivid account of the harsh reality of naval warfare that was, as Nelson's fate attests, no respecter of rank
