by Chris Durbin
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Bibliography
The following is a selection of the many books that I consulted in researching the Carlisle and Holbrooke series:
Definitive Text
Sir Julian Corbett wrote the original, definitive text on the Seven Years War. Most later writers use his work as a stepping stone to launch their own.
Corbett, LLM., Sir Julian Stafford. England in the Seven Years War – Vol. I: A Study in Combined Strategy: Normandy Press. Kindle Edition.
Strategy and Naval Operations
Three very accessible modern books cover the strategic context and naval operations of the Seven Years War. Daniel Baugh addresses the whole war on land and sea, while Martin Robson concentrates on maritime activities. Jonathan Dull has produced a very readable account from the French perspective.
Baugh, Daniel. The Global Seven Years War 1754-1763. Pearson Education 2011. Print.
Robson, Martin. A History of the Royal Navy, The Seven Years War. I.B. Taurus, 2016. Print.
Dull, Jonathan, R. The French Navy and the Seven Years’ War, University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Print.
Sea Officers
For an interesting perspective on the life of sea officers of the mid-eighteenth century, I’d read Augustus Hervey’s Journal, with the cautionary note that while Hervey was by no means typical of the breed, he’s very entertaining and devastatingly honest. For a more balanced view I’d read British Naval Captains of the Seven Years War.
Erskine, David (editor). Augustus Hervey’s Journal, The Adventures Afloat and Ashore of a Naval Casanova: Chatham Publishing, 2002. Print.
McLeod, A.B. British Naval Captains of the Seven Years War, A View for the Quarterdeck. The Boydell Press, 2012. Print.
Life at Sea
I recommend The Wooden World for an overview of shipboard life and administration during the Seven Years War.
N.A.M Rodger. The Wooden World, An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy. Fontana Press, 1986. Print.
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The Author
Chris Durbin grew up in the seaside town of Porthcawl in South Wales. His first experience of sailing was as a sea cadet in the treacherous tideway of the Bristol Channel, and at the age of sixteen, he spent a week in a tops’l schooner in the Southwest Approaches. He was a crew member on the Porthcawl lifeboat before joining the navy.
Chris spent twenty-four years as a warfare officer in the Royal Navy, serving in all classes of ship from aircraft carriers through destroyers and frigates to the smallest minesweepers. He took part in operational campaigns in the Falkland Islands, the Middle East and the Adriatic and he spent two years teaching tactics at a US Navy training centre in San Diego.
On his retirement from the Royal Navy, Chris joined a large American company and spent eighteen years in the aerospace, defence and security industry, including two years on the design team for the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers.
Chris is a graduate of the Britannia Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, the British Army Command and Staff College, the United States Navy War College (where he gained a postgraduate diploma in national security decision-making) and Cambridge University (where he was awarded an MPhil in International Relations).
With a lifelong interest in naval history and a long-standing ambition to write historical fiction, Chris has completed the first four novels in the Carlisle & Holbrooke series, in which a colonial Virginian commands a British navy frigate during the middle years of the eighteenth century.
The series will follow its principal characters through the Seven Years War and into the period of turbulent relations between Britain and her American Colonies in the 1760s. They’ll negotiate some thought-provoking loyalty issues when British policy and colonial restlessness lead inexorably to the American Revolution.
Chris lives on the south coast of England, surrounded by hundreds of years of naval history. His three children are all busy growing their own families and careers while Chris and his wife (US Navy, retired) of thirty-six years enjoy sailing their classic dayboat.
Fun Fact:
Chris shares his garden with a tortoise named Aubrey. If you’ve read Patrick O'Brian's HMS Surprise, or have seen the 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, you'll recognise the modest act of homage that Chris has paid to that great writer. Rest assured that Aubrey has not yet grown to the gigantic proportions of Testudo Aubreii.
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Feedback
If you’ve enjoyed Holbrooke’s Tide, please consider leaving a review on Amazon.
This is the fourth of a series of books that will follow Carlisle and Holbrooke through the Seven Years War and into the 1760s when relations between Britain and her restless American Colonies are tested to breaking point.
Look out for the fifth in the Carlisle Holbrooke series, coming soon.
You can follow my Blog at:
www.chris-durbin.com
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