Rating: 
Summary: Deserves 6 stars!
Review: This is an outstanding book. Some Nelson bios are too wordy and repetitive. Hayward's style and point of view make for an easy read and an informative one as well. I do suggest reading either Christopher Hibbert's or Edgar Vincent' Nelson biographies before reading "God and Glory"
Rating: 
Summary: Hard to keep reading
Review: This was a book I found hard to keep reading, despite its being short. It was recommended highly by a Nelson scholar as a new look at the great man. First of all, I found the book marred by a low, awkward style. "Lord Nelson's talents as a naval warrior have not been exceeded or exaggerated. He was extremely good..." "If I had any particular moral or practical lessons in mind when I wrote [this book], and I don't think I did, it may have been something to do with the strength of the human spirit."
I also found it jarring when Hayward was discussing the modern military doctrine of maneuverism, because of the hideous jargon -- maneuverism, warfighting, surfaces and gaps, directive control -- which seemed to substitute for familiar words strange and hideous cant.
As regards the substance of the book, I didn't always think Hayward had the balance of the evidence right. But the one place where I thought he was just wrong also had to do with maneuverism. Maneuverists don't destroy, they defeat. So Hayward sets out to prove that when Nelson says he wants to annihilate the French fleet, he doesn't really mean it. Annihilate doesn't mean annihilate, and furthermore during Nelson's chase of Villeneuve across the Atlantic and back prior to Trafalgar, Nelson said he didn't want to destroy Villeneuve, he only wanted to keep him out of further battles that year. Good little maneuverist, that Nelson. But Nelson only said that because he believed himself so outnumbered that he could not annihilate the French as he would have wished. Nelson famously made the comment that if he captured 11 enemy ships and let one go, he wouldn't consider that a victory. Nelson demonstrated his doctrine of annhilation at the Nile, at Trafalgar. I don't know whether defeat and not destruction, or for that matter maneuverism as a whole doctrine, makes any sense. But I do know that Nelson really did want to annihilate, meaning destroy or capture *all* the enemy ships, because it was these ships which represented the greatest threat to England, of a French invasion force. Merely defeating the naval enemy in the age of sail, on the other hand, meant lobbing a few shots in passing, capturing a couple of ships, and breaking off contact. No maneuverist was Nelson in this regard.
There must always be a tendency to want to fit the great captain into the confines of doctrine. But Nelson was the great innovator of naval warfare in his era precisely in that he sought the annihilation of his enemy.
In reading the Hayward, I kept thinking how much I relished Mahan's Life of Nelson by contrast, not because Mahan is a hagiographer, but because Mahan had thought it all, judged it all, and done a magnificent job at it.
Rating:
Summary: Undoubtedly the best recent assessment of Nelson.
Review: Who can complain when reading a book that breaks free of staid biographical traditions and explores its subject via an original method and with completely new topics of emphasis? True: this is not a conventional biography but, as the author says, a series of thematic essayS that cover poorly understood or hitherto ignored aspects of Nelson's career. That is precisely this book's strength. To have an experienced and obviously expert modern military analyst explain Nelson's character and career (little space and no importance is given to the love affair stuff) is refreshing and, for anyone involved in the Profession of Arms, most important. This is a great study of character, leadership, naval theory, strategy and tactics. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Rating:
Summary: A very beautiful and thoughtful book. Originality +
Review: Yes, this deserves a five-star rating. It is brilliant. I didn't know terribly much about warfare, and certainly not in a way that would enable me to critique what captains did two hundred years ago. So it was a treat to learn from Joel Hayward (a Kiwi, would you believe?) precisely why Lord Nelson was so very successful. Hayward does not narrate. HE EXPLAINS.He explains Nelson's art of war in a new and ground-breaking way, and analyses many important subjects that have, strangely, received scant or no attention before now. Hayward's Nelson is far more human and psychologically understandable than the iconic figure prortrayed by many biographers. In this new assessment Nelson emerges as a naval warrior who often made mistakes, anguished over them, deeply lamented the loss of lives they caused, accepted responsibility for them, and LEARNED not to repeat them. In doing so, he experimented through necessity, and studied fanatically what his predecessors had done. The result of all this was SUCCESS! Hayward's Nelson wasn't a good soldier, and was actually lucky on several occasions not to have been killed ashore. His efforts on Corsica earn him no glory, and Hayward criticises him, fairly, for being jealously hostile and contrary to the British army and its officers. Yet Nelson, a deeply spiritual man, found it very easy to understand the religiousness of the many Catholic and even Muslim leaders he had to deal with. He prefered both Catholics and Muslims to atheists, and as a consequence proved a most empathetic colleague. Indeed, in a highly original chapter (the whole book is very original), Hayward demonstrates that Nelson was an effective and very committed multi-national coalition commander. Hayward's assessment of Lord Nelson's "leadership style" (chapter 3) is without doubt the best EVER written. No wonder leading Nelson authority Colin White says Hayward's book "should be required reading in all military academies, and in schools of management as well". And Hayward breaks new ground in analysing WHY Nelson grew to hate the French but NOT Britain's other enemies, including Danes, Spanish and Americans. There are very few weaknesses in this ground-breaking book. It is the most important of the many new books on Nelson. I say this for two reasons. First, it asks new questions and sheds new light about a figure we all thought we knew so well. Second, it shows that soldiers and sailors throughout the world can, even now, in this age of computers, learn a great deal from an admiral who died two centuries ago, when ships were wind-driven and fired cannonballs. In other words, Nelson still has relevance!!! Highly recomended. AAAAAAAA++++++++++++
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