Winner of the Longman's History Today Book of the Year Award and the inaugural Westminster Medal for Military Literature
More than a century had gone by since the Battle of Trafalgar. Generation after generation of British naval captains had been dreaming ever since of a 'new' Trafalgar - a cataclysmic encounter which would decisively change a war's outcome. At last, in the summer of 1916, they thought their moment had come...
Andrew Gordon's extraordinary, gripping book brilliantly recreates the atmosphere of the British navy in the years leading up to Jutland and gives a superb account of the battle itself and its bitterly acrimonious aftermath.
"You look at our reliance on communications today, on cyber and all this stuff, and then you read Andrew Gordon’s book on The Rules of the Game about what went wrong for the Royal Navy between Nelson’s navy at Trafalgar and Admiral Jellicoe’s navy one hundred years later at Jutland, and you get a real reminder of how you can take fundamental errors that just screw you up royally."