THAT HAMILTON WOMAN: EMMA AND NELSON

18 Dec 20
Posted by: Bill Evershed

NR 108/3 (Aug 20) kindly carried my review of England’s Mistress (368 pp) by Kate Williams. That Hamilton Woman is a pocket version of the tale! Same price. But only 110 pages and packed with 41 mainly colour illustrations which include a couple of nudes!  Everything that you might need to glean; almost all the salient titbits in England’s Mistress are included.

And my usual test page 59?  A reference to Earl Beatty’s “friendship with the wife of a fellow Naval Officer which was perhaps the naval romance of the c20th, similarly tortuous to that of Emma and Nelson, but which passed without much gossip”.

So, for the busy XO, searching for something spicy to say at a Trafalgar Night Dinner, or maybe for ‘Sweethearts & Spouses’ (if that is now PC), this could be the book for you. Incidentally, the author, Barry Gough, is the son of the CO of HMS Bulldog which captured the Enigma machine and other vital information from U110 in May 1941.