REVIEW BY NICK HEWITT
Developing a fresh interpretation for a well-charted subject area is always a challenge, as this reviewer knows only too well. I therefore approached Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s reconsideration of the naval campaign fought to sustain the Soviet Union via the perilous northern convoy route between 1941 and 1945 with some trepidation, having spent some years as resident historian aboard HMS Belfast, which operated in the Arctic for over a year, and having read almost every existing English-language book on the subject as a consequence.
It is with some relief, therefore, to be able to open this review by saying that the author has succeeded in his aim of bringing a fresh perspective to this very well-established topic. His approach, clearly laid out in the introduction, has been to avoid going over old ground by attempting to relate every single convoy and incident in what was a very long campaign, and instead to focus on a series of key incidents, devoting one or more chapters to them, but then filling in the gaps between with the briefest of linking text.
Through this approach, his intention is to avoid the pitfalls of previous writers, who, the author says, have only been able to include everything by ‘judicious abridgment, in the course of which many of the most dramatic experiences have been summarised in a few paragraphs.’ Battle of the Arctic is unequivocally an account of the experience of the Arctic Convoys and not a detailed analysis of the political, economic, or grand strategic context, which the author confines himself to sketching out as briefly as possible, and only when absolutely essential. Sebag-Montefiore gives appropriately generous credit to those who have gone before, and in particular to the late Richard Woodman, whose Arctic Convoys 1941-1945 will always be the definitive account for this reviewer.
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