British Battleships of World War 1

Author: R A Burt
Published by Seaforth Publishing
Price around £45.00 GBP (December 2013)
ISBN: 9781848321472
Pages: 344
Hardback
Review by Les Venus

Our thanks to Seaforth Publishing for supplying our review sample – get this excellent book here now.

When Geoff passed me this book for review I was quite simply blown away by its quality. It’s a big book and it screams quality in look and feel and really demands to be read. It doesn’t disappoint. The cover is evocative with a beautiful black and white photograph of a ‘Dreadnought’ in a large swell that really captures the imagination from the off.

This book was especially exciting to me as I have the Trumpeter 1:350th Scale HMS Dreadnought with a host of White Ensign Models on my to-do list for the magazine in the next few months; this book will be invaluable to me.

Opening the front cover right away offers a fantastic colour plate with another at the back. Inside is packed with dozens of incredibly good and for me new photographs of all 19 classes of Battleship used in the campaign and some that would even move into WW2, if only in name at least.

The text is well written in a readable font, so often fonts are too small and it really puts me off a book, in every aspect this book is a pleasure. It is clear to me that Mr Burt loves his subject and he has obviously spent a great deal of time researching the ships he covers.

As a modeller everything is here from ideas about weathering, layout, structure hue, colour and the feel of the real thing that’s so critical in making an effective model.

If your interest is ships or WW1 or just in great books this one is for you I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Les V.