OT Book Review: Seize the Fire
For Xmas I was surprised to receive
Seize the Fire: Heroism, Duty, and the Battle of Trafalgar, Adam Nicolson, 2005, ISBN 0-06-075361-7. I'd never heard of this book before. It was given to me on a whim by somebody who knows nothing of naval history, or the book itself, just because she knows I'm into that subject. The major selling point for her was that the dust jacket had extra sections folded back forward along the 1st and last pages instead of just the usual short tabs inside the covers. What can I say? Women judge books by their covers
. But feminine intuition was borne out by the contents.
I have to say that this is absolutely the strangest, or at least the most
different, book of naval history I've ever read. Despite (or maybe because of) that, I found it highly interesting and enjoyable, and therefore recommend it.
Another thing I have to admit: when I opened the package, I thought, "Oh Gawd, another Trafalgar book." What naval grog doesn't already know the OOBs, the events of the battle, which ships locked up with which enemies, who surrendered to whom, and all that? But that's emphatically NOT what this book's about. Like I said, it's strange and different.
In the preface, the author spells out what this book is about:
Any description of Trafalar cannot confine itself to the facts of rigging and armament, weather and weight of broadside. Other, less material expectations are just as potent a presence in battle as the concrete realities of a ship in action. This book addresses that underlayer, the subtlest and slipperiest of historical levels: pre-conceptions, and the way they shape present behaviour. It is an attempt to describe the mental landscape of the people who fought and commanded at one of the great battles in history and it asks, in particular, why and how the idea of the hero flowered there.
The book's primary focus, given its interest in heroes, is on the Brit side and on Nelson in particular. However, the national psyches of Spain and France at that time are delved into as well. The book draws on many threads of contemporary pop culture to attempt to show that because the people involved thought X, they did Y, and thus Z happened. Even the title,
Seize the Fire, which sounds imaginative by itself, is actually from Blake's poem "Tyger tyger burning bright". And even though the book mentions that Blake hated Nelson, it shows that they both had many of the same mental attitudes, as did most of their contemporaries.
Like I said, it's a strange bit of naval history. The blood and thunder is in there eventually, but the focus then is on how people reacted to the horrific situations they created and/or found themselves in, rather than on the maneuvers of ships. This, and the storm afterwards, all happen in the 2nd half of the book, and by then you've got a handle on thought processes of those involved, so their reactions seem no surprise by their own standards, although somebody who's never been in a similar mess might be shocked.
Anyway, it's a good read. So good that it's hard to put down, despite adding little to the dry factual knowledge that naval grogs hold dear. But all the while you're turning pages, you'll still be struck by the strangeness of the book. But perhaps that's part of the appeal.