The Pride and the Anguish

Singapore, November, 1941 . . . They called it the "Gibraltar of the Far East"—a British rock that could not be taken. But suddenly, in a lightning blow, Singapore may be defeated. Call it incompetence or call it false pride—it doesn't really matter. Just as the warplanes of the Rising Sun take command of the skies. Lt. Ralph Trewin, who was a proud recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, arrives at Singapore as second-in-command of the gun boat HMS Porcupine. Is it too late to overcome the ignorance and blind optimism he finds in Singapore?

Acclaimed as the foremost naval writer of the twentieth century, Douglas Reeman was born in Thames Ditton, Surrey, England in 1924. With the outbreak of World War Two, he joined the Royal Navy at the age of sixteen. He saw service in the North Sea and Arctic, and the Atlantic and Mediterranean campaigns, beginning as a midshipman in destroyers and transferring later to motor torpedo boats. Following the war, he held a variety of jobs, including walking the beat in London's East End as a uniformed policeman and in the plain-clothes Criminal Investigation Department. He returned to active service during the Korean War, and remained a naval reservist while working as a children's welfare officer for the London County Council. In 1957, Douglas wrote the fictionalized version of "his war" more for his own satisfaction than out of any hope of publication. A Prayer for the Ship, was published in 1958, and was the beginning of a remarkable career. Ten years later, having established himself as one of the foremost modern sea-story writers of his time, Douglas returned to an earlier love, the ships and men of Nelson's day. For this series he chose the pseudonym Alexander Kent. In June of 1968, To Glory We Steer was published, and its hero, Richard Bolitho, was introduced to an enthusiastic readership. Today the exploits of Richard and Adam Bolitho are featured in twenty-eight novels, the lives and deaths of other men, equally heroic, in thirty-five Reeman novels. Kent and Reeman are published in fourteen languages around the world. More than twenty-three million copies have been sold.