AT THE BEGINNING of the twentieth century, the British found a new religion known as Sea Power. proclaimed by such thoughthl naval historians as Sir Julian Corbett and the American Rear-Admiral A T Mahan, its Old Testament was the defeat of Napoleonic France by British maritime supremacy and its New Testament was naval rearmament, the Navy League and the revolutionary Dyeadnought battleships with which the new German threat at sea was to be faced.

Peter Padfield's book is a successor to the works of that time - and a notable addtion to those of his own - but it is also more than that. The first surmise is that the two opening chapters are not about ships and battles but the origins and eruption