Featured battle : Battle of the River Plate

Part of Second World War

Date : 26 September 1939 - 17 December 1939

The German pocket-battleship Admiral Graf Spee was in position for surface raiding before the war began. She began sinking merchant ships towards the end of September. An extensive search by groups of British warships failed to locate her until dawn on the 13th December. A determined and courageous action by three British cruiser which were out gunnned in both range and weight of shot, caused the German ship to seek shelter in Montvideo harbour. The Admiral Graf Spee was scuttled outside the harbour in the evening of the 17th December 1939.

The Two Battles of Copenhagen

Gareth Glover
This book covers the two battles of Copenhagen, the intervening years and what followed. Both the political and military aspects are dealt with in relation to one another. There is an extensive bibliography should the reader wish to follow up any thread in greater detail.
I declare my bias I am a Gareth Glover fan and I am pleased to say that this book will not disappoint others like me. The narrative flows easily without getting bogged down in lists or too much factual detail. But the detail, the product of much research, is contained in the appendices of which there are thirty six. The author’s forte in flushing out hitherto unpublished first hand accounts is used to good effect. He makes clear the difference between reporting and opinion whenever he has exercised his judgement especially when dealing with variations between a number of original accounts.
There are a number of illustrations throughout the book and a well chosen set of colour plates in the centre of the text. The weak point, true of almost every recently published book, are the maps. It is all very well to insert small facsimiles of the original maps which were used at the time but they are very little use without scales to the reader attempting to understand locations. I turned to the maps in The Great Gamble by Dudley Pope, published in 1972, and used its four excellent maps.
This is a most readable, informative and enjoyable book which we fully recommend to anyone with an interest in the Napoleonic period.

Pen & Sword Military, 2018