Peter Padfield

When Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess set off for Britain on a peace mission in May 1941, he launched one of the great mysteries of the Second World War. Had he really acted alone, without Hitler's knowledge? Who were the British he had come to see? Was British intelligence involved? Now, award-winning historian Peter Padfield presents striking new evidence that demands the wholesale reappraisal of the episode, both in terms of what actually happened - and who knew what - and its significance in the wider context of the war. For, allied to a powerful argument that Hess must have had both Hitler's backing and considerable encouragement from Britain, Padfield demonstrates that he also brought with him a draft peace treaty committing Hitler to the evacuation of occupied European countries. Made public, this would have destroyed Churchill's campaign to bring the United States into the war. Expertly woven into a compelling narrative that touches on Lord (Victor) Rothschild and the Cambridge spy ring, possible British foreknowledge of Operation Barbarossa and the 'final solution', MI6's use of Hess to prevent the bombing of London and the mysterious circumstances of his death in Spandau prison - including the previously unseen witness accounts from that day - Hess, Hitler and Churchill is among the most important history books of recent years.

The latest volume by this outstanding American naval writer is both a collection of essays and the closest thing to autobiography Captain Beach is likely ever to give us. He writes with his usual freshness, grace, compassion, and well-informed opinions on his own life, his father's career, Admiral Rickover (who was indispensable to the nuclear propulsion program but impossible to deal with on the personal level) and the intrigues that cost him his promotion to rear admiral, and the role of the U.S. Navy in the twenty-first century, concerning which he also suggests reforms. Along the way, he tells anecdotes about his marriage of more than 50 years, his wartime service, the origins of several of his novels and of the characters in them, and the complexities of having the nuclear submarine Nautilus christened by Mamie Eisenhower. If this should be Beach's last book, it fittingly concludes his career as writer and seafarer. We can most sincerely say, "Sailor, rest your oar."

Lieutenant Guy Greville of HMS Dulcinea and the corvette’s diehard sailing captain, the Earl of Saxmundham, who cannot abide engines or engineers, were last met off East Africa in The Lion’s Claw. Here they sail into a deeper mystery: arriving in Bombay, commercial capital of British India in the 1890s, they learn that one of the ships on the station, HMS Curlew, has disappeared without trace. Greville meets the seductive wife of her captain and is smitten. Talking to her of her husband he gains the impression that the ship’s disappearance may not be accidental, and the search for the Curlew becomes an intellectual and emotional quest leading Greville via the profundities of Buddhist thought and chases at sea to the jungle-grown temples of the ‘lost cities’ of nineteenth century Ceylon. This is a story told with all the pace and descriptive power that distinguishes the work of Peter Padfield.