Bibliography - Suggestions on British Naval History

It is possible to buy literal tonnes of books on the First World War Royal Navy, many of which are well worth reading. It might be useful to have a couple of places to start:

• From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, by Arthur J. Marder.
  This five volume collection, published by Oxford University Press between 1961 and 1978 (the revised volume on Jutland) is one of the first serious studies, based on Admiralty documents, of the post-1900 development of the RN and its conduct of the war. Despite its wealth of detail, it is also good reading. However, some of Marder's analysis has been superseded by later research:-
• Sir John Fisher's Naval Revolution, by Dr. Nicholas Lambert.
  University of South Carolina Press, 1999. This new look at Admiral Fisher's ultimate goals combines study of the British financial picture with the developments in technology to provide what is probably a better picture than Marder's battleship-centric depiction of the Admiralty. Essential reading, in fact.

If you are interested in a detailed, technical, description of British warships, then the series by David K. Brown, former Deputy Chief Naval Architect of the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors is a key source:

• Before the Ironclad (Conway Maritime Press, 1990)
  describes the transition from sail to steam
• Warrior to Dreadnought(Chatham Publishing, 1997)
  the ancestry of the ship types, and in some cases the vessels themselves, that served in the First World War
• The Grand Fleet (Chatham Publishing, 1999)
  The source on the Dreadnought Battlefleet, as well as the supporting warships.

There was one climatic battle during the dreadnought era: Jutland, 31 May 1916. Inconclusive but bloody just the same. A good introduction, if you can find it, is:

• Jutland 1916 by John Costello and Terry Hughes (Futura Publications and George Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976). Well illustrated, well written, it is a very good narration of the Battle.

Once you get a grasp of the Jutland essentials, there are two good recent analyses:

• Jutland - An Analysis of the Fighting by John Campbell (Conway Maritime Press, 1986) for what is practially a shell-by-shell description, for those interested in the technicalities and
• The Rules of the Game by Dr. Andrew Gordon (John Murry, 1996) to get a better understanding of why the Royal Navy fought and acted as it did.

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