The first great bourgeois victory

The proposal that the English have a long tradition of violence is the opening of Adam Nicolson’s book and he supports his belief by invoking the Book of Revelations, Virgil, Homer, Joanna Southcott, the Methodists, Jane Austen and William Blake to bring this together at Trafalgar. That occasion cannot, of course, be without Nelson, and he writes, ‘The apocalyptic tradition required a conjuring, wise, intuitive, violent and triumphant leader.’