Ahoy there, fellow Nelson fans!
Followers on my Instagram will know that I have pretty much stopped posting on this website because AI keeps stealing my stuff. I had such grand designs for this site, as well. Sigh. Basically, I saw too many social media posts using phrases suspiciously like my own. I have assumed that the people ‘writing’ the posts just asked AI to knock together some jaunty text about Nelson or Trafalgar or Burnham Thorpe (etc.) and then ChatGPT just rinsed my page and gave them a barely watered down version of that. A kind of Nelsonian-content grog, if you will.
As dilemmas go, it’s all very 2026.
Anyway, the important thing is this: my new biography, Lamented Hero: The Strange Life and Times of Horatio Nelson, is at last due to be published on November 6th (Pickle Night, for those in the know).
The book will be available on Amazon or you can email me direct at nelsonthesailor@gmail.com for signed copies. I am taking orders as of… now!
Lamented Hero will cost £19.99 but, believe me, at 530 pages, you won’t feel short-changed. (For those who order direct, there will be a postage and package cost, though I don’t quite know what that will be yet.)
In the meantime, here is (roughly) what it will look like. And, for those of you who don’t have eyes like the Terminator, I have copied the paste of the blurb underneath:
Blurb:
Eye-patch. Amputation. Trafalgar. Empire. Infidelity. Admiral home-contents insurance.
These are the things people think of when they hear the name Horatio Nelson.
But there was another Nelson. Not a grey statue or backroom waxwork, but a motherless boy from the Norfolk coast who joined the Royal Navy aged twelve.
Lamented Hero tells the story of Nelson’s extraordinary life and times, from the scandals of the Georgian streets to the debauchery of its elite; from the threat of midnight invasions to the threat of accidentally hearing a verse of Romantic poetry.
Today, Nelson’s Column stands above England’s capital, looking down on Westminster (seldom a bad idea). How he got there is a story that everybody should know.
And there you have it. I will post again closer to the release date, but, for more regular updates from me, Instagram is the place to be. After all, someone’s got to keep their eye on those AI accounts…
TTFN,
Ryan
