[...]... Olivier, Lady Russell, David Oldland, Louis Hodgkin, Roger Morriss, Andrew Gottschalk, Andrew Whiteley, Dorothy Wilkinson, Anne Pons and Elizabeth Hudson for their kind help in various ways and to John and Jeannie Marcel for guiding us round the Nelson family habitat in Norfolk Adam Freudenheim at Yale University Press has been a pleasure to work with His enthusiasm, empathy and efficiency have made the... need for unconditional love and admiration, and simultaneously awoke and intoxicated his senses Perhaps inseparable from the development of his charismatic power were the paradoxes and contradictions in Nelson s character and behaviour A fount of kindness and good nature, he exemplified the humane virtues of communication, negotiation and collaboration But this same man was an eager and committed professional... letters connected with Nelson and the Hamiltons; George Naish’s collection, Nelson s Letters to his Wife and Other Documents; the letters of Nelson s contemporaries and colleagues, including Earl Spencer, Earl St Vincent and Lord Keith in the Navy Records Society’s editions, and naval documents, letters, reports and minutes held in the Public Record Office at Kew They have allowed Nelson to unfold in my... detail of his books on Nelson s Navy, and N.A.M Rodger’s seminal work The Wooden World, which has led us all to a re-evaluation of life in the Georgian Navy In the background were memories and impressions culled over forty years from the great biographies of the past, Mahan’s The Life of Nelson, Carola Oman’s Nelson, Jack Russell’s Nelson and the Hamiltons, Tom Pocock’s Horatio Nelson and Dudley Pope’s... Office and lived in fine style in Kentish Town Against this, Edmund Nelson came from a family of parsons albeit with a land-owning grandfather His own father, also an Edmund, had been at Eton and Cambridge and had married Mary Bland, the daughter of a Cambridge baker, a man of considerable fortune and property, including the rectory of Hillborough, where Nelson s father had become incumbent When Edmund and. .. ‘slablines’ and ‘topping lifts’ And then there were tools like ‘fids’ and ‘marlinspikes’ As the ship reached the West Indies and sailed in a northerly direction to touch at the major ports of the Windward Islands, then on to the Leeward Islands, and then due west to Jamaica, they were delivering manufactured goods from England, setting down passengers, taking on board sugar, rum and passengers for England With... provide an added and powerful motive force for those who have the capacity and opportunity for great achievement, so that an apparent handicap in life becomes an advantage.4 Edmund Nelson was among the kindest, most considerate and most easygoing of men and fathers It is easy to see where his son’s own good nature came from And so the young Nelson grew up with servants, ‘Will indoors’ and ‘aide de camp’... thoughts were of Emma and his daughter, the whole business of his fame outweighed by the simple relief of knowing that he had not failed himself or those he had fought with The essential contradiction, and how we are variously inclined to react to it, may have been best summed up by two men: the diplomat Lord Minto, Nelson s friend and admirer for more than a decade; and Alexander Scott, Nelson s chaplain,... simply, this is the idea that a commander conveys what he intends, and what he expects of those under him, to the extent that all share in their commander’s mind and are empowered to deal with the contingencies of battle without losing their sense of the plot Nelson was well aware that it was impossible to adopt detailed command and control in a large-scale sea battle and expect a decisive result His... beginning been a remarkable merging of two Nelsons, the person and the icon Modern biographers have in some senses brought Nelson into sharper focus, but have still left room for a realistic, balanced and interwoven account of the whole of Nelson s emotional and professional experience In pursuing this objective I allow Nelson s life to unfold chronologically, and allow him to describe his feelings as . Life of Nelson, Carola Oman’s Nelson, Jack Russell’s Nelson and the Hamiltons, Tom Pocock’s Horatio Nelson and Dudley Pope’s The Great Gamble. Many individuals have contributed with interest and. unconditional love and admiration, and simultaneously awoke and intoxicated his senses. Perhaps inseparable from the development of his charismatic power were the paradoxes and contradictions in Nelson s. Data Vincent, Edgar. Nelson: love & fame / Edgar Vincent. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-300-09797-2 (hardback) ISBN 0-300-10260-7 (paperback) 1. Nelson, Horatio Nelson,