Losing Nelson

by Barry Unsworth (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2000

  $3.45

  In the basement of a large Victorian house in London, Charles Cleasby painstakingly re-enacts the great sea battles of his hero, Horatio Nelson. He is also writing a faithful biography of the great man, as a true English hero for an age without idols, a 'bright angel' to Charles' dark shadow. But as Charles' visiting typist, Miss Lily, begins to question Nelson's heroism, and as Charles unearths evidence which tarnishes the image of his icon, his own precarious sense of identity is undermined and the battle raging inside him - between darkness and light, reality and fantasy - threatens to overwhelm him.

• Used

  Paperback
  2000

  $3.45

  Losing Nelson is a novel of obsession, the story of Charles Cleasby, a man unable to see himself separately from the hero-Lord Horatio Nelson-he mistakenly idolizes. He is, in fact, a Nelson biographer run amok. He is convinced that Nelson, Britain's greatest admiral, who lost his own life defeating Napoleon in the Battle of Trafalgar, is the perfect hero. However, in his research he has come upon an incident of horrifying brutality in Nelson's military career that simply stumps all attempts at glorification. Books about the sea and those who sail it are much in vogue. This seems to have been set off by the surprising and much deserved popularity of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm, not to mention the Aubrey/Maturin novels of Patrick O'Brian...[Losing Nelson is] the best book of the lot. -Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World (1999 Critic's Choice). A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1999; A New York Times Notable Book of 1999. Reading group guide available.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1999

  $3.45