Britannia's Reach

"Antoine Vanner is the Tom Clancy of historical naval fiction" - Author and Nautical Historian Joan Druett.

Britannia's Reach is the fourth novel in the Dawlish Chronicles series. It continues the story of the ambitious Royal Navy officer Nicholas Dawlish, last seen in Britannia's Wolf. It's November 1879 and on a broad river deep in the heart of South America, a flotilla of paddle steamers thrashes slowly upstream. It is laden with troops, horses and artillery, and intent on conquest and revenge. Ahead lies a commercial empire that was wrested from a British consortium in a bloody revolution. Now the investors are determined to recoup their losses and are funding a vicious war to do so.

Nicholas Dawlish, on leave from the Royal Navy, is playing a leading role in the expedition. But as brutal land and river battles mark its progress upriver, and as both sides inflict and endure ever greater suffering, stalemate threatens.

And Dawlish finds himself forced to make a terrible ethical choice if he is to return to Britain with some shreds of integrity remaining...

Why this series?

"I've enjoyed sea adventures since I was introduced to C.S. Forester's Hornblower books when I was a boy," says author Antoine Vanner, "and I've never tired since of stories of action and adventure. The Napoleonic era has however come to dominate the war and military genre but the century that followed it was one no less exciting, an added attraction being the arrival and adoption of so much new technology from the 1860s onward. My novels have as their backgrounds actual events of the international power-games of the period and Britannia's Reach is no exception."
About the Author: Antoine Vanner has had an adventurous and varied life that prepared him well to write novels he describes as "Duty and Daring in the Heyday of the British Empire." "I have survived military coups, a guerrilla war, storms at sea and life in mangrove swamps, tropical forest, offshore oil-platforms and the boardroom," he says. "That's a good starting point for any writer." Antoine has lived and worked long-term in eight countries, has travelled widely in all continents except Antarctica and is fluent in three languages. He has a passion for nineteenth-century political and military history and has a deep understanding of what was the cutting-edge technology of the time. His knowledge of human nature and his first-hand experience of the locales - often surprising - of the most important conflicts of the period provide the impetus for his chronicling of the life of the Royal Navy officer Nicholas Dawlish. "I'm fascinated by the Victorian period," Antoine says, "for not only was it one of colonial expansion and of Great Power rivalry that often came to the brink of war, but it was also one of unprecedented social, political, technological and scientific change. Britain's power may have been at an apogee but it was under constant threat and would demand constant adaptation from those who aspired to shape events. Many born in the 1840s would not only play significant roles in the later decades of the century but be key players in the maelstrom that would engulf the world in 1914. The Dawlish Chronicles are set in that world of change, uncertainty and risk and they involve projection of naval power to meet complex social, political and diplomatic challenges." Find out more on Antoine's website www.dawlishchronicles.com which covers a very wide range of historical and naval topics related to the late Victorian period. You can also follow Antoine's blog on http: //dawlishchronicles.blogspot.co.uk/ Antoine also welcomes you to follow him on Twitter at @AntoineVanner