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Article: Was Nelson a war criminal? Andrew Roberts praises a startling - and convincing - biography which reveals a far from heroic side to a national hero
- Article from:
- The Sunday Telegraph London
- Article date:
- November 11, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2001 The Sunday Telegraph London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Nelson: The Man and the Legend
by Terry Coleman
Bloomsbury, pounds 20, 424 pp
pounds 17 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222
THIS BOOK is written in the very best tradition of revisionist
history: it is well researched, closely argued, at odds with
received wisdom, long overdue and will infuriate many, especially as
we approach the bicentenary of the subject's death - or,
as the author would have it,
his suicide.
The thesis is that although Admiral Nelson was an undoubted naval
genius and just the kind of hero Britain desperately needed in the
early days of the Napoleonic Wars, he was also a ruthless, vain,
heartless, hypochondriac, self-obsessed, publicity-hungry war
criminal. And Emma ...