- Geoffrey Bennett
Captain Geoffrey Martin Bennett (1908-1983) was a British
Royal Navy officer and author.Career
Born into a naval family in 1908, he went to Dartmouth
Royal Naval College where he was qualified in signals. He becameFlag Lieutenant to a number of Admirals and in World War II he was first in Freetown,Sierra Leone , and then signals officerForce H in the Mediterranean where he earned the DSC. He was promoted to Commander at the end ofWorld War II . He then captained HMS "St. Brides Bay" in theMediterranean Sea and then served in the Admiralty at Bath. He was promoted to Captain at the beginning of 1953 and then spent two years as naval attaché inMoscow , also coveringWarsaw andHelsinki where he alerted the Admiralty to the potential growth of the Soviet navy. Retiring soon after returning to Britain he joined the household of theLord Mayor of London and then, in 1960, became Secretary to the Lord Mayor ofWestminster where he became an authority on civic protocol.Writer
He always wrote and was awarded the Royal United Services Institution gold medal for an essay three times. At the end of WWII he published his first novel "Phantom Fleet," a naval yarn under the pseudonym "
Sea Lion "; as a serving officer he could not use his own name. Over the next two decades he produced about twenty such novels for both adults and children and also wrote a number of radio plays for theBBC , including several serials forChildren's Hour which featured the adventures of two Midshipmen 'Tiger' Ransome and 'Snort' Kenton. His novels included the allegorical "This Creeping Evil", "TheDiamond Rock " set in theCaribbean nearMartinique in theNapoleonic wars and based on a true incident, and "The Quest of John Clare" about a family haunted by a curse down several generations.After retiring he took to naval history and under his own name published studies of the main battles of both world wars and Nelson, also a biography of Admiral
Lord Charles Beresford , "Charlie B" and "Cowan's War", an account of the British naval action in the Baltic in 1919 under Admiral SirWalter Cowan which successfully thwarted the Reds in Russia from seizing control of the three Baltic states,Estonia ,Latvia andLithuania . He was elected a Fellow of theRoyal Historical Society .He was passionately fond of the
theatre andmusic and on his return fromSoviet Union gave two long talks on the BBC's Third Programme on theBolshoi Ballet which he had had opportunity to see in Moscow before they were well-known outside the Soviet Union.Retirement
After retirement he lived in the Shrophsire town of
Ludlow in a 17th century cottage opposite an hotel where Nelson had once stayed.At the end of the 20th century there was renewed interest in his histories and most have been republished. "Cowan's War" was retitled "Freeing the Baltic" and has been translated into Estonian.Partial bibliography (histories)
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** Republished as: —. (2001). "Freeing the Baltic". Edinburgh: Birlinn. ISBN 184341001X
**Also translated into Estonian.
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**Also translated into German as "Kattegat"
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* —. (1975). "Naval battles of World War II". New York: D. Mckay. ISBN 0679505814
* —. (1972). "Nelson, the commander". New York: Scribner. ISBN 0684128861
* —. (1977). "The Battle of Trafalgar". Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 0870219146
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