Edwyn Gray's history of British submarine warfare in the First World War is less an examination of the employment of submarines in the war than it is a collection of stories of their deployments. Drawing upon their reports and postwar memoirs, Gray recounts their experiences in dramatic fashion, interspersed with the sort of humorous anecdotes that give a sense of how the sailors coped with the unique stresses they faced. While it makes for entertaining reading, there is little effort to connect it to the larger context of the war at sea, let alone the larger conflict taking place around them. Readers seeking entertaining accounts of combat will find Gray's book well worth reading, but those seeking an analysis of their role in the war or any comparison with the similar campaign mounted by Germany will likely be disappointed by its limitations.

My seventy-second podcast -- an interview with Harry Bennett about the shifts in British naval policy after the First World War -- is up on the New Books Network website! This one was a long time in coming, as I had originally recorded it in December; unfortunately, technical issues delayed the post-production process until now. I hope you enjoy the results!

My latest podcast is up on the New Books Network website! In it, I interview Andrew Boyd about his new book on the Royal Navy's defense of their empire in eastern Asia in the years leading up the Second World War. Enjoy!

My latest podcast is up on the New Books Network website! In it, I interview Steve Dunn about his book on the Royal Navy's efforts to secure the English Channel during the First World War. Enjoy!

Among warships cruisers may lack the power of battleships and the mystery of submarines, but their combination of speed and firepower made them vital components of most major navies for much of the twentieth century. Though ostensibly about the Royal Navy's cruiser force during the Second World War, Alan Raven and John Roberts provide in this book a far more comprehensive compilation, one that begins with the pre-First World War Arethusa class and concludes with the postwar completions of wartime programs. Its coverage is encyclopedic, detailing their design histories, the construction and trials of the warships, and the modifications they underwent over the course of their service lives.

Supplemented by numerous tables and generously illustrated with photographs and line drawings, Raven and Roberts's book is an invaluable technical resource for anyone interested in the subject. Yet where the authors fall short is in detailing the war service of these vessels. Such coverage is actually provided in the early chapters, which describe the cruisers that served in the First World War. This makes the absence of similar coverage for their successors in the Second World War -- the titular focus of the work -- particularly glaring. Readers seeking a more comprehensive analysis would do well to supplement this book with Norman Friedman's more recent British Cruisers: Two World Wars and After which, while not as well supplemented with pictures, nonetheless provides a more useful narrative analysis of its subject.