Nelson: A Personal History [Hardcover]

Christopher Hibbert (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1994

Horatio Nelson was a national hero who secured a century of maritime supremacy for his country and became the focus of British identity and aspiration. This is a portrait of the man and the battles of St Vincent, the Nile and Copenhagen.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Accomplished British author Christopher Hibbert turns his attention to England's greatest maritime leader in this celebrated biography. Nelson joined the navy at age 12. By the time of his decisive victory over the French and Spanish at Trafalgar in 1805--a battle that would kill him--Nelson had lost his right arm and the sight in one eye from a life of naval combat. Nelson's activities on shore were often as intriguing as those at sea. Hibbert reveals a man loved by his fellow sailors but reviled by many social elites. Nelson, for example, carried on an extended affair with the wife of a powerful politician, and she even bore him a child. An absorbing book about a dynamic warrior. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Self-promoting, vain, risk-taking, thirsty for recognition and glory, English admiral Horatio Nelson (1758-1805)-who crippled Napoleon's fleets in the French Revolutionary wars-fulfilled his childhood dream of becoming a sea officer. In this rousing, seaworthy biography, we meet a vexatious man whose short temper was exacerbated by the loss of an arm and an eye in combat. Falling madly in love with exuberant, obese ex-prostitute Lady Emma Hamilton, the wife of his host in Naples, British envoy Sir William Hamilton, Nelson neglected his own wife and later went through a mock marriage ceremony with Emma to sanctify his adulterous affair and assuage guilt. We also glimpse his softer side-financially generous to relatives; tenderly solicitous toward Horatia, his daughter by Emma; and stoic in pain, especially when mortally wounded in the Battle of Trafalgar, his tragic victory over the combined fleets of France and Spain. Drawing on letters and diaries of Nelson, Emma and their contemporaries, British historian Hibbert, biographer of Elizabeth I, has produced a magnificent flesh-and-blood portrait that minutely re-creates Nelson's daily cares, loves, feuds, battles, scandals and exploits.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 472 pages
• Publisher: Perseus Books; First American Edition edition (October 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201624575
• ISBN-13: 978-0201624571
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,135,830 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Scholarly but incomplete view of Nelson's life, May 17, 1998

By 

N. Leviton (USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Nelson: A Personal History (Paperback)

I had wanted to read a biography of Nelson for some time, having become interested in him thanks to Patrick O'Brian. This one is the right price, and is a good starting point, but I find I still need to read more to get all the information I want, as this is a biography of Nelson ON LAND.

I know other people have written copiously of his tactics, and I figured this wasn't solely a textbook of strategy, written with the clarity and generosity of hindsight, but I also figured I would come out of it with some sense of Nelson as a sailor. I didn't. There is one mention of a ship missing stays, and another of his gunnery crews firing broadsides at the astounding rate of one per minute (I don't know how many minutes that lasted), but I have no sense of how he must have impressed his superiors to advance to post-captain so quickly. I can't tell, based on reading this book, just how he liked to sail.

Here's an example of how the book is weighted: It gave four pages to the famous Battle of the Nile (Abu Qir), quite a bit of which was dedicated to the admittedly horrible sight of L'Orient blowing up, and the next fifty pages, approximately, on his dalliance in Naples with Lady Hamilton. I understand her importance in his life--after reading this book, I can hardly be unaware of it--but I want to know which qualities Nelson most valued in his ships and crews. He seems to have been a reasonably friendly captain and admiral, but I wish Mr. Hibbert had documented his career at sea with the impressive attention he gave his life ashore.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Half-Nelson, June 19, 2000

By 

Bruce Loveitt (Ogdensburg, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Nelson: A Personal History (Paperback)

I am a great admirer of Christopher Hibbert but I was very disappointed in this book. When I finished it I had the impression that I still didn't know much about what kind of man Nelson was. He seemed to be almost a cartoon character or someone in an old swashbuckler type movie, rather than a real person. One reason for this is that Mr. Hibbert relied too much on quotations from Nelson's own letters. Nelson apparently always saw himself as someone destined to be very special and oftimes when he wrote or said something it seemed as though he did it with one eye (if you'll pardon the pun) on posterity. He would be melodramatic and predict that this or that battle would make his name or result in his death, etc. He would be very upset when he wasn't promoted quickly enough or didn't get prize money after a battle but when he made a comment for public consumption he would say his only wish was to serve king and country. He loved to strut around with medals and ribbons pinned to his chest and he was seemingly always available to have his portrait painted by every artist in England. Mr. Hibbert does not provide any analysis or even express his opinion. It is almost as though he thought this was a story that could tell itself. Well,..... it couldn't! Mr. Hibbert called this book "Nelson: A Personal History", but it is too much about Nelson's personal life and at the same time not personal enough. There are too many quotations from letters to Emma Hamilton expressing his love for her, but not enough information about why Nelson abandoned his wife. There is too much gossip from people who either liked Mrs. Hamilton or couldn't stand her and one is left confused rather than feeling that a balanced picture has been presented, again, because Mr. Hibbert makes no attempt to separate the wheat from the chafe. Nelson's career is given short shrift and it seems as though in a flash he has gone from being a boy at sea to admiral, with no explanation of how he got from one place to the other. We are shown enough to know that Nelson was indeed a very brave (if reckless and sometimes foolhardy) man but it is never explained to us what made Nelson a great strategist or set him above any other captain or admiral of the fleet. We are given only one glimpse of the complexity of the man, and this towards the end of the book. Nelson met the future Duke of Wellington in a room of the Colonial Office, where they were both waiting to see Lord Castlereagh. Nelson had no idea that he was talking with somebody of any reputation or importance, although Wellington recognized Nelson. According to Wellington "he (Nelson) entered at once into conversation with me, if I can call it conversation, for it was almost all on his side and all about himself and, in reality, a style so vain and so silly as to surprise and almost disgust me." Nelson then left the room for a moment, apparently to find out from someone who exactly he had been speaking with. After finding out that Wellington was "somebody" he came back into the room and his manner was totally different. Wellington continued "his charlatan style had quite vanished...and certainly for the last half or three-quarters of an hour, I don't know that I ever had a conversation that interested me more...I saw enough to be satisfied that he was really a very superior man; but certainly a more sudden or complete metamorphosis I never saw." If only during the course of this 400 page book these depths could have been explored, we might then have been presented with the "real" Nelson!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Misses the mark, June 27, 2002

By 

Scholar "18th century student" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nelson: A Personal History (Paperback)

For a biography of a military leader, I was quite surprised to find out how little military events and details are given by Mr. Hibbert. For those interested in sea battles, tactics, and getting a feel for what life was like in the British Navy at the time of the Napoleonic Wars, skip this book. Hibbert's excruciating detail about Nelson's social life, liesure travel, meals at inns, parties, Lady Hamilton's dresses accumulates to the point that it is very tempting to "abandon ship" on this book. Many, many paragraphs drone on about tedious social affairs and extensive quotes from letters are repetitive and boring, not illuminating.