The Royal Navy in Action - Art from Dreadnought to Vengeance

People say that a picture tells a thousand words, and this is certainly the case for the maritime artwork used in this book. John Fairley has used an excellent range of maritime paintings including those of Norman Wilkinson, Richard Eurich and William Wyllie, depicting the Royal Navy’s dramatic confrontations of the last 120 years. No stranger to using art in his book the author has written numerous books on equestrian art including The Art of the Horse, Racing in Art and Great Racehorses in Art. Having joined the Royal Navy as an officer aboard the aircraft carrier HMS Albion, John Fairley draws on his own naval service experience to describe the background and significance of the ships and conflicts that these paintings so vividly record in his book. The author brings together the mighty ships in action at the turn of the 19th and 20th Century and, at the same time, remembers and illustrates with some fine maritime paintings, the crucial role of the Royal Navy in the Falklands War and some of the aircraft carriers. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and the excellent maritime paintings, although some of the paintings might have been printed in larger format to see the finer details. This is a book for those with a huge passion for naval art.