The story of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, when for six extraordinary months the city was at the centre of world government as the peacemakers wound up bankrupt empires and created new countries. This book brings to life the personalities, ideals and prejudices of the settlement brokers.

Features the single-minded Admiral von Tirpitz; the ambitious Winston Churchill; the ruthless, sycophantic Chancellor Bernhard von Bulow; Britain's greatest 20th-century Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey; and Jacky Fisher, the eccentric admiral who revolutionized the British Navy and brought forth for the first true battleship, HMS Dreadnought.

Describes the rise of Britain to naval greatness, and the central place of the Navy and naval activity in the life of the nation and government. This work describes not just battles, voyages and cruises but how the Navy was manned, how it was supplied with timber, hemp and iron, how its men were fed, and how it was financed and directed.

This definitive account reveals how the political and social progress of Britain has been inextricably intertwined with the strength - and weakness - of its sea power, from the desperate early campaigns against the Vikings to the defeat of the great Spanish Armada.

In this study of World War I the author presents the military conflict, the battles on land, sea and in the air, together with interpretations of military events. He also shows how the war also acted as an engine for social change which shapes our world today.