Spectre of Invasion: the Royal Navy and the defence of Britain’s coast 1900-1918

Steve Dunn is the author of 15 books, mostly on specific aspects of World War I at sea, from the Dover Patrol to the defence of the Western Approaches. In Spectre of Invasion, he has turned his hand to a more ambitious project. Although the core of the book focuses on German threats to the British coast before and during the Great War, and the Royal Navy’s response, Dunn starts his story much earlier. An opening chapter looks at actual and potential invasions, from the Roman forts of the Saxon Shore to the end of the Victorian era. This chapter notes landmarks along the way, such as the Spanish Armada and the Martello Towers of the Napoleonic Wars (though oddly omitting the Jacobite threat