News, Articles and Comment

BRE. The latest book review is now available. It considers a new book providing an account of, and examining the circumstances around PQ17.

Ed. The practitioner author paints a stark picture of a casualty-intensive opening phase of a near-future Pacific war, employing lessons from the Second World War to argue that depth of capability must be actualised today. Originally published in the USNI’s Proceedings, April 2026. A 10 minute read.

Ed. Originally published in November 2013 [101/4, p. 325], the author’s concluding comments from his series [101/1, p. 10], [101/2, p. 132], [101/3, p. 230], on long-term budget trends during the Great Depression and Great Recession eras provides a framework for where the RN stands today. A 20 minute read.

BRE. The latest book review is now available. It considers a book examining the development of the aircraft carrier in French service through the 20th century and beyond.

BRE. The latest book review is now available. It considers the latest edition of Geoffrey Till’s Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty-First Century.

Ed. Two letters responding to recent RN developments and advocating for reform.

BRE. The latest book review is now available. It considers a new biography of Admiral Raymond Spruance, whose “achievement is not merely to reconstruct Admiral Raymond A. Spruance’s operational record, but to illuminate a deeper and more unsettling truth: that victory in industrial war may depend less on boldness than on restraint, less on charisma than on intellect, and less on the commander as hero than on the commander as thinker.”

Ed. It was timely that Dr Nina Baker’s book on the brave Scottish Merchant Navy women who lost their lives in World War II should cross our desks the other week and I am grateful to Lt Cdr Helen Taylor RN for reviewing it. It generated the question, what about the 75,000 members of the Women’s Royal Naval Service known as the WRNS? It was a less enlightened era so their primary purpose was ‘to free up manpower to serve at sea’ but that meant that they got to serve in many important roles across the war effort from parachute packing, to ammunition technicians, photographers, coxswains, drivers, photographers and coders. Our grateful thanks to Dr Jo Strange for the following taken from her book on the history of the WRNS published in 2016.

BRE. The latest book review is now available. Ahead of International Women’s Day on 8 March 2026, Lt Cdr Helen Taylor RN considers a short book exploring the life stories of 18 Scottish women who served in the Merchant Navy in the First and Second World Wars, and made the ultimate sacrifice.