Book review Trafalgar - the men, the battle, the storm By Tim Clayton and Phil Craig Published by Hodder and Stoughton ISBN 0340830263 Price: £20 As SeaBritain 2005 gets underway, Trafalgar takes the reader back 200 years to what the authors describe as 'Britain's greatest-ever naval triumph1.

Tim Clayton and Phil Craig depict the areas they consider to be paramount to the battle from a very human point of view and vividly re-create the events and atmosphere at the time: 'self-sacrifice and duty were the watchwords of the modern (British) navy, which was immensely powerful yet overstretched, so huge and crammed with ambitious talent that it no longer promised the high-road from ability to fortune that it had done 50 years earlier.' An altogether fascinating historical read.

Trafalgar and the Spanish Navy - the Spanish experience of sea power By John D Harbron Published byConway Maritime Press ISBN 0851 774776 Price: £25 Trafalgar and the Spanish Navy provides a detailed assessment of the aims and achievements of the Spanish Navy with particular reference to its part in the Battle of Trafalgar. It attempts to prove that the Spanish Navy was more organised and efficient than has previously been acknowledged and that the defeat of the Armada was not the end of the Spanish Navy as a major maritime power.

The author, John Harbron, looks in detail at Spanish warship design and construction and the book is illustrated throughout with contemporary plans, paintings and ship models.

The general feel of this book is superbly factual and technical.

Ship - 5,000 years of maritime adventure By Brian Lavery Published by Porting Kindersley ISBN 1405305894 Price: £25 This is an interesting, easy-to-read and eye-catching voyage through more than 5,000 years of ship history. Its 400 pages contain many dramatic and colourful images such as a virtual tour of Nelson's Trafalgar ship HM5 Victory and the sinking oil tanker Amoco Cadiz.

Written by leading maritime authority, Brian Lavery, Ship examines the influence of ships on industry, discovery and war through eyewitness accounts and through extracts of legendary journeys and heroic sailors. It includes the age of sail, steam power, the world wars and the global age.

Like many Dorling Kindersley books, Ship is a book you can dip into and be led somewhere unexpected - a perfect coffee table read..