Author Description

Beginning with the naval mutinies of the 18th century, the author examines the most telling of the many uprisings that have occurred worldwide in British and British-attached forces over some 160 years. Among the many mutinies he covers are the Spithead mutiny of 1797; the mutiny of British forces in Etaples in 1917; mutinies by the Slavo-British legion in Russia in 1919; the Navy at Invergordon in 1931, British forces at Salerno in 1943 and the Royal Indian Navy in 1946. And with all of them. the threat of the death sentence. In this moving, if often horrifying, study, the author analyses the causes of these revolts, and the official reactions to them, drawing a number of points of comparison between them. Based on intensive research - from official sources, contemporary papers and first-hand accounts - some of it never published before, here at last is an accurate, compassionate and readable study of a shamefully concealed phenomenon.