Seven Seas, Nine Lives

Captain Alan William Frank Sutton's enthralling biography starts when, as a young midshipman, he was in command of a small picket boat returning a potentially mutinous crew to the battle-cruiser HMS Repulse on which he served. The book builds to an amazing and exciting climax which ends in the open cockpit of a Fairey Swordfish torpedo bomber during the legendary attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto in November 1940. The Littorio sees us: she opens fire. The flashes of her close-range weapons stab at us. First one, then others everything opens up along her whole length. We're coming in on her beam; we're in a terrible mass of cross-fire cruisers, battleships, shore batteries, the lot. The bloody Italians are firing everything apart from major armament. But we're too low for the enemy gun-aimers. The place stinks of cordite and incendiaries and burning sulphur. Everywhere is wreathed in smoke thick, choking, foul stuff. This biography has been written with the full cooperation of Captain Sutton who has given the author fascinating insight into a career of remarkable courage and diversity.