The silent deep: the Royal Navy submarine service since 1945. By Peter Hennessy and James Jinks

There is a subtle irony in the title of this new history of Britain's post-1945 submarine service. As any submariner knows, the sea is in fact full of natural and artificial noise, and much of this book is about the intense acoustic competition between the submarines of Britain and its Cold War rivals. The book is also itself a deliberate attempt to give a voice to the Royal Navy's traditionally ‘silent service’, and provide wider exposure to the impressive and expensive achievements of ‘Submarine Britain’. Author Peter Hennessy, here joined by his former student James Jinks, is one of the most acute chroniclers of Britain's national security state and, as might be expected, the book is very good on policy. The authors recount how the submarine service reshaped itself to meet the postwar Soviet threat, how it took on responsibility for Britain's nuclear deterrent, and the ups and downs of its intimate relationship with the United States, at each stage showing the link between politics, technology and operations.