Nelson: Britannia's God of War

by Andrew Lambert

  13 Trafalgar Day 1905: the Navy League has dressed the column and a small crowd has braved the London smog to commemorate the centenary!.

  14 Benjamin West’s The Apotheosis of Nelson of 1807, with Nelson posed as the dead Christ, carried in the arms of Victory to a mourning Minerva while Neptune watches. The signal ‘England expects’ gives the picture a motto. As a celebration of the cult of the hero, this combination of sacred and profane imagery was irreligious, if not blasphemous.