Nelson's victory at Trafalgar on 21 October 1805 was a pivotal event in European history. But Trafalgar was not simply an isolated battle fought and won in an afternoon - the naval campaign had in fact begun more than four years before.

This extraordinary period, following Napoleon's threat to invade England in 1801, came to be known as The Great Terror, and Britain was on the alert. As the Grande Armee faced a Dad's army of English volunteers across the Channel, a secret war of espionage and subversion was fought in the shadows. New weapons - rockets, submarines and torpedoes - were developed.

Drawing on diaries, letters and newspapers, Tom Pocock paints a vivid picture of the years from 1801 to 1805, and of people caught up in these events: Nelson himself as he blockaded the French at sea for two unbroken years, his love Emma Hamilton waiting at home, Jane Austen and her naval brothers, the diarist Fanny Burney, the admirals, generals and politicians, as well as the lesser-known men such as Fulton, Congreve, Moreau and Pichegru who waged the secret war on either side of the Channel.

The Economist
"Engrossing... The Terror Before Trafalgar is narrative history at its shining best."

Peter Padfield, BBC History
"Tom Pocock is the doyen of Nelson scholarship in our time... Pocock has provided a fascinating cast of characters as outstanding in their way as Nelson..."

Sunday Times
"Pocock adds fresh lustre to his reputation as our leading authority on Nelson with this sudy of the threat of a Napoleonic invasion that convulsed Britain"

Richard Woodman, Lloyd's List
"Mr. Pocock is perhaps the world's leading authority on the great admiral... Mr. Pocock 's book is a lucid exposition of this vibrantly exciting period..."

Nicholas Fearn, Independent on Sunday
"A superb contribution..."
About the Author: Tom Pocock is the author of 18 books (and editor of two more), mostly biographies but including two about his experiences as a newspaper war correspondent. Born in London in 1925 - the son of the novelist and educationist Guy Pocock - he was educated at Westminster School and Cheltenham College, joining the Royal Navy in 1943. He was at sea during the invasion of Normandy and, having suffered from ill-health, returned to civilian life and in 1945 became a war correspondent at the age of 19, the youngest of the Second World War. After four years wth the Hulton Press current affairs magazine group, he moved to the Daily Mail as feature-writer and then Naval Correspondent, becoming Naval Correspondent of The Times in 1952. In 1956, he was a foreign corresponent and special writer for the Daily Express and from 1959 was on the staff of the Evening Standard, as feature writer, Defence Correspondent and war correspondent. For the last decade of his time on the Standard he was Travel Editor. He wrote his first book, NELSON AND HIS WORLD in 1967 on his return from reporting the violence in Aden and his interest in Nelson has continued. Indeed, eight of his books are about the admiral and his contemporaries; his HORATIO NELSON was runner-up for the Whitbread Biography Award of 1987. Tom Pocock has contributed to many magazines and appeared on television documentaries about Nelson and the subject of another of his biographies, the novelist and imperialist Sir Rider Haggard.