The 1993 first edition of this book by R. A. Burt has long eluded me, the result of the hundreds of dollars that a second hand copy demands. As a long time battleship (BB) and battlecruiser (BC) enthusiast, I always felt that my collection was incomplete without this particular book. When this new revised edition was available for pre-order, I had no hesitation ordering months before its publication. At the price it is a no brainer. In fact, I ordered copies from both the Amazon site and the Amazon UK site to make sure that I would get it at the earliest possible time (and I have no intention to return any of the copies). Now that the book has arrived, I am very pleased with my decision, as this book is an authoritative reference on British BBs and BCs for the period after World War One.
In my opinion, this is one of the two masterpieces on this subject, the other being Alan Raven and John Roberts' (R&R)
British Battleships of World War Two: The Development and Technical History of the Royal Navy's Battleships and Battlecruisers from 1911 to 1946
. Other works pale in comparison. The two books have many things in common, in particular their focus on the design of the ships and their changes over time. Thus, it does not surprise that the contents of the two books overlap quite a bit, and both contain a lot of excellent information, photos and line drawings. Nevertheless, I still believe any BB/BC enthusiast like me could not be wrong getting both Burt's book and R&R's book.
Both books cover Renown, Repulse and Hood in addition to the Queen Elizabeths, Royal Sovereigns, Rodney, Nelson, and King George Vs. Highlight of the key differences between Burt's and R&R's:
(1) The BB/BC classes pre-dating the Queen Elizabeth class BB are covered by Burt but not by R&R, i.e. the 13.5" gunned BB/BCs such as the Iron Dukes and Tiger. R&R starts with the QE class BBs.
(2) The light battlecruisers (Glorious, Courageous, and Furious) and their new lives as aircraft carriers are covered by Burt but not by R&R.
(3) R&R has a lot of details on the designs that were never built/completed, e.g. G3, N3, and the Lion Class BB. Only the G3 is briefly mentioned in Burt's book.
(4) Vanguard is covered by R&R but not by Burt, who ended his book with the King George V class BBs.
(5) Burt covered the ships class by class. R&R first by the time period and then class by class. Both ways have their goods and bads.
(6) Burt gave a rather short conclusion and spent paragraphs defending the British designs, with virtually no comparison with foreign counterparts. R&R provided a much more in-depth comparison of post-treaty British BB with foreign counterparts together with his conclusions, though some new information became available after the book had been written.
(7) While there are many excellent drawings in Burt's book, they span at most just the two adjacent pages with a gap in between. On the other hand, R&R has many even larger profile and deck plan drawings in fold-outs, of a similar high quality.
It also puzzles me a bit why sometimes there are minor discrepancies between the two books, even though this revised edition by Burt is more than 30 years later than that by R&R. Neverthless, most of the times they agree with each other. They both have details/opinions that are not found in the other and complement each other quite well.
All in all, this book contains lots of information. Get this book and you would not regret, as long as you are interested in BB/BC of this period. If you do not already have R&R's book, this book is an absolute must. It worths every dollar spent.
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Antonio Maiorca
British seamanship
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 23, 2013