About the Author

Antoine Vanner's own adventurous life, his knowledge of human nature, his passion for nineteenth-century history and his understanding of what was the cutting-edge technology of that time, make him the ideal chronicler of the life of Nicholas Dawlish RN. "I find the entire Victorian era fascinatng," says Vanner, "because for my generation it's 'the day before yesterday' so to speak. It's history that you can almost touch. Our grandparents grew up in that period - my grandfather was born in the year of Britannia's Wolf - and you heard a lot from them about that time. My grandmother could recall seeing Queen Victoria, and my grandmother-in-law saw Paul Kruger, who as a boy had been on the Great Trek in 1835. So much in that period was similar to what we still have and you feel you could live easily in it, and then you hit some aspects - especially those associated with social conventions and attitudes - that make it seem wholly alien. It was a time of change on every front - intellectual, scientific, medical, social, political and technological - and how people seem to have accommodated so well to the changes was quite remarkable." Vanner adds "There's also a horrible fascination also that a period which saw so many improvements which ensured better lives for so many people, and which was imbued with such optimism, had a lack of awareness of the Armageddon of 1914 which was just around the corner. So many lives were to be cut short, so much hope and private happiness to be destroyed, so much turmoil and suffering. Yet nobody foresaw it." And that too is part of Dawlish's story. Find out more on www.dawlishchronicles.com Follow Antoine vanner's weekly blog on: dawlishchronicles.blogspot.co.uk