Alexander Kent

This book brings a flavour of the quality and breadth of the Journal into one volume that spans its history. It includes 16 classic papers from the archive, some of which will be well known to the cartographic community, while others may not be as obvious.

This fourteenth Bolitho novel has the epic scenes of action, the powerful characterization and the authentic period detail that have made Alexander Kent a bestseller wherever sea stories are read. After eight years of war between Britain and France there is at last a rumour of peace.

As the clouds of war begin to rise once more over the Channel, he has no choice but to accept an appointment to the Nore. With his small flotilla of three topsail cutters Bolitho sets out to search the coast for seamen who have fled the harsh discipline of His Majesty's Navy for the more tempting rewards of smuggling.

Colours Aloft!, the sixteenth Richard Bolitho novel, bears all the hallmarks of its best-selling predecessors. September 1803Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho finds himself the new master of the Argonaute, a French flagship taken in battle.

This book brings a flavour of the quality and breadth of the Journal into one volume that spans its history. It includes 16 classic papers from the archive, some of which will be well known to the cartographic community, while others may not be as obvious.

March, 1811After two and a half months of precious peace in Cornwall with his beloved mistress Catherine, Admiral Richard Bolitho is once again summoned to London.

In March 1808, as Napoleon holds Portugal and threatens his old ally Spain, Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho is dispatched once more to the Cape of Good Hope to establish a permanent naval force there. Setting aside his bitter memories and the anguish of a friendship betrayed, Bolitho takes passage in the ill-fated Golden Plover.

Success to the Brave is the fifteenth Richard Bolitho story and chronologically it follows the events covered by A Tradition of Victory. In the spring of 1802 Richard Bolitho is summoned to the Admiralty in London and given his orders for a difficult and, to him, distasteful task.

Returning safely to England after the dramatic capture of Martinque, Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho finds an all too brief respite from war and politics in the arms of his mistress Catherine Somervell. Although ordered immediately to the Indian Ocean, for the first time Bolitho's thoughts are not of glory but his own - and the Navy's - past.

The new year of 1774 seems to offer Richard Bolitho and his friend Martyn Dancer the culmination of a dream. Both have been recommended for promotion, although they have not yet gained the coveted lieutenant's commission.

A searing and gripping tale of trouble on the high seas, and of the weakness of the human spirit, In the King's Name heralds the return of our greatest living maritime writer and the legendary Adam Bolitho..

Filled with high-seas intrigue and sharp tensions, this nautical novel takes an intense voyage into the heart of Napoleonic-era Africa. The year is 1819 and Captain Adam Bolitho has been sent on an urgent but risky mission to make a fast passage from Plymouth to Freetown, West Africa, with secret orders for the senior officer stationed there. Due to the slave trade being declared illegal, ships in every harbor are waiting to be scrapped and officers have been cut loose without hope of future commands, thus Adam soon finds himself the object of envy and jealousy. In Africa he discovers unexpected allies and faces an enemy far more powerful and ruthless than any he has known before.

Onward, a new 38-gun frigate whose first mission is not war but diplomacy, as consort to the French frigate Nautilus. Under the burning sun of North Africa, Bolitho is keenly aware of the envy and ambition among his officers, the troubled, restless spirits of his midshipmen, and the old enemy's proximity.

After the murder of a revenue office, Bolitho is swept aboard his brother's cutter Avenger on a dangerous mission of hide and seek. Band of Brothers1774 - the new year seems to offer Richard Bolitho and his friend Martyn Dancer the culmination of a dream.

Every harbour and estuary is filled with ghostly ships, the famous and the legendary redundant in the aftermath of the war. In this uneasy peace, Adam Bolitho is fortunate to be offered the seventy-four gun Athena, and as flag captain to Vice-Admiral Sir Graham Bethune once more follows his destiny to the Caribbean.

March 1814Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho returns to England from several months' rigorous patrolling off the North American coast.

But peace will present its own challenge to Adam Bolitho, captain of His Majesty's Ship Unrivalled, as many of his contemporaries face the prospect of discharge. The life of a frigate captain is always lonely, but for Adam, mourning the death of his uncle Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho, that solitude acquires a deeper poignancy.

FEBRUARY 1806The frigate carrying Vice-Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho drops anchor off the shores of southern Africa.

February 1813With convoys from Canada and the Caribbean falling victim to American privateers, Sir Richard Bolitho returns to Halifax to pursue a war he knows will not be won, but which neither Britain nor the United States can afford to lose. England's youngest admiral desires only peace.