Book of the year 1874

History

Priestley, H. E

Europe

K. Mason

Half a gale

Frost, Michael

Gunfire in Barbary: Admiral Lord Exmouth's battle with the Corsairs of Algiers in 1816 : the story of the suppression of white Christian slavery

Perkins, Roger

Here is the social life of the Royal Navy from 1655 onwards told as the story of rum, known to the Service as "Nelson's blood". Introduced in the West Indies as a substitute for beer by Admiral Vernon (Old Grogram to his sailors) the watered down version he sanctioned rapidly acquired its sobriquet "Grog". And grog was still its name when the Admiralty, in their wisdom, finally decided it had no place in a modern navy whose complex equipment and armament required the steadiest hand and clearest of mind. July 31, 1970 was Black Tot Day, when the last "up spirits" was piped.  Henceforward ship's companies could buy beer aboard in lieu but the last drop of Nelson's blood had been spilled...at least until an American, Charles Tobias, came along. He persuaded the Admiralty that the specially-blended naval rum had a commercial future from which sailors' welfare could bebefit-as indeed it has. The author Charles Pack, who had a distinguished career in the British Navy and was director of the British Naval Museum, steers a careful course between the diehard traditionalists who believed the navy had lost its major morale booster and the modern naval administrator who felt that a liquor as potent as rum had no place aboard a man-of-war. He tells his story with scholarship leavened with humor from the lower deck thqt highlights part of the Royal Navy's social life enjoyed over three centuries. A naval feast.

Nelson's blood: The story of naval rum

Pack, A. J.

Military

London Philharmonic: music makers since 1932;

Arts & Photography

Kallaway, William

Music

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Books by K. Mason